Syrian orphanage

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Schneller School (2011)

The Syrian Orphanage was a missionary - diaconal institution in Jerusalem , whose roots lie in the admission of several orphans on November 11, 1860 by Johann Ludwig Schneller .

The beginnings

Jerusalem 1888. The Syrian Orphanage is located northwest of the city area.

The teacher and missionary Johann Ludwig Schneller came to Jerusalem in 1854 to re-establish and manage the local Brethren House of the St. Chrischona pilgrim mission . In 1855 he began to work as an independent missionary and in this context came to Lebanon - then Syrian . There, in 1860, a civil war broke out between the Druze and Maronites . Schneller and his wife took care of several orphans and brought them to Jerusalem on November 11, 1860. This started the construction of an orphanage. In 1861 a support committee made up of representatives of the Protestant community in Jerusalem, including the Evangelical-Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Samuel Gobat (1799–1879), was founded.

1860–1896: The development under Johann Ludwig Schneller

One of Schneller's motto was: "What is more vivid, what is more promising than a child?"

Johann Ludwig Schneller was able to work there until his death and build up a wide-ranging work. The persecution of the Armenians since 1894 made his commitment even more urgent, so that his sons Theodor and Ludwig continued the work after his death.

From 1884 to 1886 Johannes Lepsius was a member of the board of the Syrian Orphanage.

1896–1935: The development under Theodor Schneller

By 1900 the area of ​​the Syrian Orphanage was almost as large as the built-up urban area of ​​Jerusalem. - With his commitment, Schneller paved the way for diaconal and missionary activities in the Middle East. After a fire destroyed the chapel of the Syrian orphanage, the Bavarian pastor Georg Bickel (1862–1924) made a new painting for the Jerusalem church. It showed the ascension of Jesus Christ.

The chapel of the Syrian Orphanage in 1935 with Bickel's altar painting

When the Jerusalem site of the Syrian orphanage was occupied by Israeli troops in the course of the Jewish-Arab war of 1948/49, Bickel's painting was taken to the Theodor Schneller School in Amman , where it still hangs today.

After the First World War, the Syrian Orphanage was under the administration of the American Near East Relief from 1918 to 1923.

1935–1940: development up to dissolution

In the year Theodor Schneller's death, 1935, Jews began to boycott German goods in response to the boycott of Jewish shops in Germany. This hit the orphanage just as badly as the German ban on transferring foreign currency abroad. Work in the Bir Salem and Nazaret branches had to be temporarily suspended and the Jerusalem facility had to be downsized.

The seizure of the site by the British administration in May 1940 marked the end of the Syrian House in Jerusalem, which until then had been run almost entirely by members of the Schneller family. The seminar was able to continue working in Bethlehem for two years ; then it was dissolved by decree. Only the home in Nazareth continued to exist until 1948.

Terrain in Jerusalem

The site was converted into a British military warehouse after the seizure and housed the largest ammunition depot in the Middle East. The British left the site in March 1948. The Etzioni Brigade used the building complex as a base of operations during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948/49 . It then became the property of the State of Israel.

In Israel, the Syrian Orphanage arouses strong public interest due to its monument protection potential. The building was included in the list of the 110 most important historical sites in Jerusalem back in the 1980s. The Israeli armed forces cleared the site in 2008. The city authorities approved the construction of residential complexes and a park while preserving the historic buildings. In 2013 the complex was sold to a building contractor. During earthworks in 2015/2016, archaeologists discovered ancient remains, including a Roman bathhouse and a large wine production site of the 10th Legion .

1951: The Schneller schools as successor institutions

After the Second World War, the facility was renamed the Schneller Schools .

In 1951 the Lutheran World Federation relocated the facility to Bethlehem for a short time. Theodor Schneller's sons, Hermann and Ernst, were finally able to continue the work. In 1951 Hermann went with the remaining children from the Bethlehem facility, first to Amman and then to the Lebanese Bekaa plain. Not far from Zahlé , in Khirbêt Qanafâr (Khirbet Kanafar), the Johann Ludwig Schneller School was opened on March 24, 1952 . It is worn by the National Evangelical Church of Beirut.

Ernst Schneller, who took over the management of the Evangelical Association for the Syrian Orphanage in Cologne from his uncle Ludwig Schneller in 1949, was one of the initiators of the Theodor Schneller School in Amman, Jordan. To do this, he went from Cologne to Amman. This school, which was founded in 1959, is in its conception comparable to the Syrian orphanage; It unites schools, homes, workshops and agriculture on a wide area. The sponsorship lies with the bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jordan.

The Schneller Schools were attended by around 700 children and young people in 2004, of whom around 180 five to 21 year olds were taught at the Johann Ludwig Schneller School. Many of the students live in one of the affiliated boarding schools. Christians and Muslims represent roughly equal religious groups among the students.

During the Israeli bombing of Lebanon in summer 2006, 226 women and children were accepted into the Johann Ludwig Schneller School, which had become a refugee center in southern Lebanon.

The Johann Ludwig Schneller School in Lebanon is currently run by Pastor George Haddad and the Theodor Schneller School in Amman by Pastor Khaled Freij.

Evangelical Association for the Schneller Schools eV (EVS)

The Evangelical Association for the Schneller Schools eV (EVS) supports and accompanies the work of the Johann Ludwig Schneller School in Lebanon and the Theodor Schneller School in Jordan.

Education for peace in the Middle East is an idea that Johann Ludwig Schneller implemented as early as 1860 with the establishment of the Syrian Orphanage. He gave orphans and children from poor families a home regardless of their religion, enabled them to attend school and vocational training and thus offered them the chance of an independent life. The EVS still sees its special task in supporting this idea today.

In addition to seeking donations for the two Schneller schools in Jordan and Lebanon, the association provides information about churches and Christians in the Middle East at events and in its publications, especially in the Schneller magazine, which appears four times a year.

Until 1994 the EVS was called the Association for the Syrian Orphanage. This association for the Syrian orphanage was founded by Ludwig Schneller , based in Cologne, to support and promote the facilities. The EVS is a founding member of the Evangelical Mission in Solidarity - Community of Evangelical Churches and Missions and sees its work as part of the worldwide ecumenical relations in the EMS Fellowship. It works in partnership with the supporting churches of the Schneller schools, both of which are member churches of the EMS.

literature

  • More quickly. Magazine about Christian life in the Middle East. Edited by the Evangelical Association for the Schneller Schools eV in the Evangelical Mission in Southwest Germany eV, Stuttgart, ISSN  0947-5435
  • Evangelisches Missionswerk in Südwestdeutschland eV (Hrsg.): The Schneller schools. Beginnings in Jerusalem, three generations - three tasks, Levantine panorama. Evangelical Mission in Southwest Germany, Stuttgart 1993.
  • Udo W. Hombach: The Syrian Orphanage: a Christian work of love with ideological question marks - a Schneller trilogy. Cologne, 2016 ( full text )

Web links

Commons : Syrian Orphanage, Jerusalem  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ludwig Schneller: From my travel bag. Commission publisher by HG Wallmann, Leipzig 1901, p. 33
  2. ↑ Marcel Serr: Schneller family: "What is more vivid, what is more promising than a child?" In: Israelnetz . February 7, 2018, accessed March 1, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Katja Dorothea Buck, Andreas Maurer, Klaus Schmid: A reading book for the 150th anniversary of the Schneller schools in the Middle East . Ed .: Evangelical Association for the Schneller Schools. 2010.
  4. ↑ Schneller schools: EVS. Retrieved April 10, 2019 .

Coordinates: 31 ° 47 ′ 26.7 ″  N , 35 ° 12 ′ 45.6 ″  E