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    Artist

  • Unknown Artist

    • Title

  • Wimpel for Karl Horn

  • Physical Description

    1 textile : ink or paint on linen fabric ; 122 in x 7.5 in

  • Date

    1893

  • Summary

    Wimpel features lettering in purple, pink, and grey ink or paint on linen fabric. Illustrations of flowers and people decorate the wimpel. His name is spelled Carl Horn on the wimpel.

  • Subject

    Judaica; Torah binders

  • Medium

    Ceremonial textiles; Torah ornaments

  • Accession Number

  • URL

Biographical/Historical Information

Karl Horn was born on September 24, 1893. His parents were Benjamin and Elifriede (née Schreiber) Horn, originally of Vorst, Germany. The family was involved in agriculture, and in particular, had businesses related to cattle trading as well as a butcher shop. Karl had three brothers: Max, Josef, and Paul. Following the events of Kristallnacht, Karl Horn and his wife, Irene (née Eckstein), along with their family, which included their son Werner, made plans to emigrate. Through a customer of Karl’s, who was an attorney in Düsseldorf, the family learned of an opportunity to immigrate to Ecuador, and decided to pursue this opportunity. They left Germany in July 1939, arriving in Guayaquil, Ecuador a month later. Eventually, the family settled in Ambato, where Karl established a butcher business. In 1946, Karl and Irene Horn and their two sons left Ecuador for the United States, and as they were sponsored by Max Horn, they settled in Seattle, where Karl and Werner found work, in the restaurant and bakery industries, respectively.

Archival collection, the Edith Horn Family Papers, 1938-2000, are kept at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives under call number 2015.573.1. The biographical notes for the wimple owners mostly came from the USHMM archival collection finding aid. https://collections.ushmm.org/findingaids/2015.573.1_01_fnd_en.pdf

Wimpels date back to the Jews of Germany, particularly Southern Germany. After a boy's brith mila the mother would clean the cloth used as a swaddling cloth, cut it into segments of equal length and sew them together. It was then painted or embroidered with the infant's Hebrew name, date of birth, and the traditional blessing, "May God raise him to a life of Torah, marriage and good deeds." The wimpel would be presented to the synagogue as a Torah binder and be used on the boy's bar mitzva, thus turning it into a concrete, as well as symbolic, link between his confirmation of entering the covenant and his traditional coming of age.

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Citation

Unknown Artist: Wimpel for Karl Horn, Leo Baeck Institute, 2024.195a.