The Technikum was conceived in the early 1900s by the German-Jewish fund Ezrah as a school of engineering and sciences. It was to be the only institution of higher learning in the then Ottoman Palestine, other than the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (founded in 1907). In October 1913, the board of trustees selected German as the language of instruction, provoking a major controversy known as the War of the Languages.