October 30. On this date in 1868, the founding group of German Templers arrived in Haifa, two months after Bahá'u'lláh's arrival. In 1946, the Haganah assassinated the community's leader Gotthilf Wagner and four more members in order to drive the group from Palestine.

 

October 30. On this date in 1868, the founding group of German Templers arrived in Haifa, two months after Bahá'u'lláh's arrival. In 1946, the Haganah assassinated the community's leader Gotthilf Wagner and four more members in order to drive the group from Palestine.

From the chapter titled "Arrival in the Holy Land" in the book A Statement on Bahá'u'lláh...

It seems, in retrospect, the keenest irony that the selection of the Holy Land as the place of Bahá'u'lláh's forced confinement should have been the result of pressure from ecclesiastical and civil enemies whose aim was to extinguish His religious influence. Palestine, revered by three of the great monotheistic religions as the point where the worlds of God and of man intersect, held then, as it had for thousands of years, a unique place in human expectation. Only a few weeks before Bahá'u'lláh's arrival, the main leadership of the German Protestant Templer movement sailed from Europe to establish at the foot of Mount Carmel a colony that would welcome Christ, whose advent they believed to be imminent. Over the lintels of several of the small houses they erected, facing across the bay to Bahá'u'lláh's prison at ‘Akká, can still be seen such carved inscriptions as "Der Herr ist nahe" ("The Lord is near") 77.

77 In the 1850s two German religious leaders, Christoph Hoffmann and Georg David Hardegg, collaborated in the development of the "Society of Templers," devoted to creating in the Holy Land a colony or colonies which would prepare the way for Christ, on His return. Leaving Germany on August 6, 1868, the founding group arrived in Haifa on October 30, 1868, two months after Bahá'u'lláh's own arrival.