Germany Seeks to Resume Talks with Israel on “templars” Property

On behalf of the West German Government, a German born agricultural economist from Stanford University has completed a survey, of property in Israel formerly owned by the “Templars, “a German Protestant sect whose members were deported by the British Mandatory authorities during the war, because of their Nazi sympathies, it was learned here today.

Prof Karl Brandt, a member of the Episcopalian Church who has taught agricultural economics at Stanford since 1938, was commissioned by the German Foreign Office to conduct the survey. He was chief appraiser of the German Farm Tenants’ Bank in the mid-twenties and director of the German Institute for Agricultural Marketing Research from 1929 to 1933.

More than 2,000 “Templars” lived in Palestine before the war. They are a Swabian sect whose members settled in the Holy Land in the 19th century and prospered as farmers Most embraced Nazism with such fervor that, at the time of Rommel’s advances in Africa, the British were compelled to deport them to Australia. Many became citizens there, but several hundred later migrated to Germany.

At the reparations conference between Israel and Germany at The Hague in 1952, consists chiefly of valuable real estate in Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa, of fertile agricultural lands at Beth Lahon in Galilee and of the former Wilhelmina Colony near Lydda. Negotiations between a German and an Israel delegation began at Copenhagen in 1953 and were recessed in Rome just two years ago, mainly because of wide differences of opinion about the value of the land involved.

The Bonn Foreign Office expects to resume negotiations this year basing its stand on Prof. Brandt’s expert opinion. If no accord can be reached, the questions at issue will be submitted to a mediator. Should they fail to agree on a mediator, one of the Scandinavian monarchs will be asked to designate a suitable person.