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    Artist

  • Unknown Artist

    • Title

  • Wimpel for Werner Horn

  • Physical Description

    1 textile : ink or paint on linen fabric ; 155 in x 7.5 in

  • Date

    1927

  • Summary

    The wimpel is a simple design of lettering in orange and blue paint or ink on linen fabric.

  • Subject

    Judaica; Torah binders

  • Medium

    Ceremonial textiles; Torah ornaments

  • Accession Number

  • URL

Biographical/Historical Information

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

Werner Horn was born on September 20, 1927. His parents were Karl Horn and Irene (née Eckstein), and he had one brother. Following the events of Kristallnacht, Karl Horn and his family 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, and when Werner finished his schooling, he left for Quito and trained to work as a baker. 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. Werner married his cousin Edith (Max's daughter) in 1952, and after a short time living in Chicago, Werner and Edith lived in Seattle the rest of their lives. Werner died in 2003.

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 Werner Horn, Leo Baeck Institute, 2024.195c.