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You're probably wondering why there are several swastika flags hanging from a building in Jerusalem in 1933 . This hotel served as the consulate for Nazi Germany in the 30s in Jerusalem . Established in 1891, the hotel fast, as it was called after 1907, was named after Abraham fast, a leader of the German Templar Society, who became its owner . The German Templars were a Christian religious movement whose essence was to prepare the ground for the second coming of Jesus Christ . And according to their belief, this would only happen by living in the Holy Land . Decades before Theodore Herzel, the father of Jewish Zionism, was born Society, started plans in 1840 and then left Germany and arrived in the Levant, establishing seven settlements across Palestine . Led by Kristoff Hoffman, a Protestant theologian from Ludutsburg , the Templars believed the second coming of Christ could be hastened by building a spiritual kingdom of God in the Holy Land , relocating from Germany to Hifa in 1869 , where a German colony can be seen on this map of Hifa . Hoffman had split from the Lutheran Evangelical Church in 1861 , taking his cue from the New Testament concepts of Christians as temples embodying God's spirit and as a community acting together to build God's temple among mankind . There are different interpretations of what a temple means . And historically speaking, it refers to a kingdom . Not just a building for prayer, but the center of an empire and a physical manifestation of the king's relationship to the kingdom's identity and power . But building a community in what was then a neglected land was an immensely difficult endeavor . Much of the ground was swamp . Malaria was rife and infant mortality was high . Arriving in Palestine decades before the first largescale immigration of Jewish Zionists, the Templars concentrated on farming , draining the swamps, planting fields, vineyards, and orchards , and employing modern working techniques unfamiliar to Palestine . They were the first to market Jaffa oranges from their settlement near Jaffa , which is still sold today