player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameOtto Paul
LastnameLindpaintner
GenderMale
CountryGermany
Date of birth1883-05-22
Place of birthMunich, Germany
Date of death1969-04-23
Place of deathTegernsee, West-Germany

About

The following piece on Paul Lindpaintner was translated and slightly adapted from the original French article, which can be accessed at the following link:
https://agorha.inha.fr/ark:/54721/f3c10ea6-31f8-497b-a1f2-4a2c0ab9359a

A cavalry officer and former professional tennis player from an aristocratic family, Paul Lindpaintner was also, in later life, an amateur art dealer. In the 1920s, he lived in London, in The Hague, and then in San Remo, while also travelling extensively between Switzerland and Germany. In the 1930s, he became the business partner of Johannes Hinrichsen, director of the gallery of the same name located at 5 Bellevuestrasse in Berlin.

During the occupation of France by Nazi Germany, Lindpaintner lived mainly in Paris, while sometimes also visiting his residence in Tegernsee, a resort town in Bavaria. By then he had become the agent of Possenbacher, a Munich merchant in direct contact with high Nazi dignitaries. In his capacity as an art dealer, Lindpaintner bought works in France and offered them directly to Dresden for the Linz Project [an unrealized art museum planned by Adolf Hitler for his hometown, Linz].

Through the Hinrichsen Gallery, Lindpaintner had direct access to Hermann Göring, particularly in 1941. He was also in contact with the art historians Hermann Voss and Gottfried Reimer. On February 3, 1944, Lindpaintner applied for membership of the Cercle Européen, a French circle for European economic and cultural collaboration. He was sponsored in this respect by Heinrich Kleinschroth, tennis coach to the Göring family.

Despite numerous clues indicating Lindpaintner’s activity in the art market during the Nazi Occupation, and in particular his direct contacts with the Nazi leaders, he does not seem to have been troubled by the Allies after the war. At the end of the conflict, he stated that all the archives at the Berlin gallery, as well as certain paintings, must have been destroyed during the allied bombardments of the German capital.

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