page_title: Schneller Orphanage
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Schneller Orphanage / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Church of Schneller's Syrian Orphanage, Jerusalem, funeral ceremony for Theodor Schneller; Events in Israel. The movable interior (altarpiece by Georg Bickel, pipe organ, pews) was dismantled in 1951 and is now built in the Christ Church (begun 1959) of Schneller School in Amman, Jordan. The altar was retrieved in 2010 and translated to the Lutheran Ascension Church, Augusta Victoria endowment. עברית: טקס אשכבה למנהל השני של בית היתומים הסורי &#8211; תיאודור שנלר בכנסיית המוסד, Original Image Name:כנסיית בית היתומים 'שנלר', בירושלים, נוסח הקרדיט:ארכיון התמונות, יד יצחק בן צבי, , Location:ירושלים
context_page_description: Schneller Orphanage, also called the Syrian Orphanage, was a German Protestant orphanage that operated in Jerusalem from 1860 to 1940.
  It was one of the first structures to be built outside the Old City of Jerusalem – the others being Kerem Avraham, the Bishop Gobat school, Mishkenot Sha’ananim, and the Russian Compound – and paved the way for the expansion of Jerusalem in the 19th century. As a philanthropic institution offering academic and vocational training to hundreds of orphaned and abandoned Arab children, it also exerted a strong influence on the Arab population of Jerusalem and the Middle East through its graduates, who spread its philosophies of "orderliness, discipline, and German language" throughout the region. The Syrian Orphanage was born out of South German Pietism, which combined Biblicism, idealism, and religious individualism.
  The orphanage provided both academic and vocational training to orphaned boys and girls from Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Armenia, Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Germany, graduating students skilled in such trades as tailoring, shoemaking, engraving, carpentry, metalworking, pottery, painting, printing, farming, and gardening.
context_section_description: By 1903 the educational facility had grown to eight buildings and included the orphanage, the school for the blind, and vocational workshops for youth.
  In 1910, the jubilee year of the orphanage's founding, a fire destroyed the third floor and wooden roof of the main building, and damaged the second floor where the church was housed. Ludwig Schneller, a son of the founder who was the administrator at the time, managed to collect over 200,000 marks in donations from Germany and rebuilt the entire structure. The upper story of the building was rebuilt in stone.
  Building and expansion continued up to World War I, by which time the orphanage occupied 150 acres (600 dunam) of land. The Schneller grounds reached all the way to present-day Romema, where Schneller planted forests on land that eventually housed the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. The orphanage's holdings were gradually reduced to 17.5 acres with the sale of land to the new neighborhoods of Mekor Baruch and Kerem Avraham.
  During World War I, the compound was used by the Turkish army and its allies as a barracks. From 1921 to 1927, Theodor Schneller resumed management of the orphanage, overseeing the modernization of the property with electrical and sewage installations, as well as new machinery for the various workshops. His son Ernst directed the orphanage from 1927 until its confiscation by the British army in 1940. The orphanage's German funding sources were severely curtailed during the 1930s when the Nazi government of Germany banned citizens from sending funds abroad.
caption: 1935 funeral service for Theodor Schneller in the orphanage's Lutheran church
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