War of the Languages

The name chosen for the new institution was Technikum (Hebrew: טכניקום), that was meant to educate and train skilled workers (Work managers, technicians, assistant engineers).

In 1913, the German Jewish aid agency Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden [de], which had maintained schools for Jewish immigrants in Palestine since 1905, sought to establish German as the language of instruction at the first technical high school, the Technikum, in Haifa (later, the Technion), which it was sponsoring.

[1][2] This sparked a public controversy between those who supported the use of German and those who believed that Hebrew should be the language spoken by the Jewish people in their homeland.

The issue was not just ideological, because until then, Hebrew was primarily a liturgical language and lacked modern technical terms.

[3] The Haifa City Museum produced an exhibit on the "War of the Languages" curated by Svetlana Reingold, in 2011.