Technion

The cornerstone of the Technikum, today the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, was laid in Haifa on 11 April 1912. The school was an initiative of the German Jewish aid society Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, funded by the estate of the Russian tea merchant Kalonymus Wissotzky, by Jacob Schiff of New York and others, and its building was designed by Alexander Baerwald. In October 1913 the board decided that sciences would be taught in German. Teachers and students across the Yishuv went on strike and boycotted the Hilfsverein schools in what became known as the Language War, and in February 1914 the board gave way: Hebrew would be the language of instruction.

The First World War delayed the opening, and the building served as a military hospital. The Technion opened its doors in 1924, a year after Albert Einstein visited and planted a palm tree there. It became Israel's leading engineering university, the source of generations of engineers, scientists and Nobel laureates behind the country's technology.