Founder of the Temple Society in Jerusalem. He had a Pietist-Christian background and received a Christian education with the Unitas Fratrum congregation in Korntal. As a young man he studied theology in Tübingen. An opponent of the much better known liberal theologian David Friedrich Strauss, he was elected to the First National German Parliament, which met in Frankfurt am Main in 1848. He dedicated his life to collecting people striving for such a "kingdom" and setting up communities in which their striving would express itself in daily life. Initially (1854) known as the Friends of Jerusalem, the group in June 1861 formed itself into an independent Christian religious organisation known as Deutscher Tempel, its members identified themselves as Templers. In 1868 the Templers started to create settlements in Palestine. The Templers could buy in Jaffa some houses and land from failed american colonists. He fell out with the Temple Society's co-leader Georg David Hardegg (1812-1879), and in June 1874 the Temple denomination underwent a schism with Hardegg and about a third of the Templers seceding from the Temple Society and later mostly returning to an official German Protestant church body.
Founder of the Temple Society in Jerusalem. He had a Pietist-Christian background and received a Christian education with the Unitas Fratrum congregation in Korntal. As a young man he studied theology in Tübingen. An opponent of the much better known liberal theologian David Friedrich Strauss, he was elected to the First National German Parliament, which met in Frankfurt am Main in 1848. He dedicated his life to collecting people striving for such a "kingdom" and setting up communities in which their striving would express itself in daily life. Initially (1854) known as the Friends of Jerusalem, the group in June 1861 formed itself into an independent Christian religious organisation known as Deutscher Tempel, its members identified themselves as Templers. In 1868 the Templers started to create settlements in Palestine. The Templers could buy in Jaffa some houses and land from failed american colonists. He fell out with the Temple Society's co-leader Georg David Hardegg (1812-1879), and in June 1874 the Temple denomination underwent a schism with Hardegg and about a third of the Templers seceding from the Temple Society and later mostly returning to an official German Protestant church body.
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