נויהרדטהוף: מושבת־בת טמפלרית נשכחת

Neuhardthof was a daughter colony of the German Colony in Haifa, which is scarcely mentioned in the research literature on the settlement of the German Templers in Israel. This article reveals the story of Neuhardthof – whose very name is unusual compared to the other Templer settlements in the country – and it aims to place the colony on the map of Templer settlements engraved in the collective memory and in the current landscape. The name Neuhardthof has been erased from maps of Israel of all kinds, and the last remnant of its existence in the landscape is an abandoned stone structure on the edge of the Carmel-Forge LTD. factory on the coastal plain south of Haifa. The tiny colony included few settlers, and several attempts were made to settle the place, only for it to be subsequently abandoned. It was first settled in the 1870s, but only became a well-established settlement in the first decade of the 20th century. This was followed by the murder of a settler which made the headlines in German newspapers, and the settlement was again abandoned during WWI. In the 1920s, members of the Third Aliyah, the Tira group, operated in the residential complex, which was also eventually abandoned. Later the site served as a temporary settlement for Kibbutz Ha-Hotrim. These episodes are weaved into the entire local history of a forgotten site, which has disappeared from the landscape, but reflects the reality of the process of settlling the country during its 70 years of existence.