Dumont-Lindemann, Louise

ACTOR, THEATRE MANAGER (GERMANY)
BORN 22 Feb 1862, Köln, Nordrhein-Westfalen - DIED 17 May 1932, Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen
BIRTH NAME Heynen, Louise Maria Hubertina
CAUSE OF DEATH pulmonary edema
GRAVE LOCATION Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen: Nordfriedhof, Danziger Strasse (Feld 27, Grab 1-2)

Louise Dumont was a daughter of the merchant Christian Heynen (b.1837). After her father went bankrupt for the second time she worked as a seamstress in 1879. In 1882 she obtained her first part at the Residenz Theater in Berlin. She appeared under her mother's maiden name Dumont. In 1888 she was engaged at the CourtTheatre in Stuttgart, where she befriended queen Charlotte of Württemberg. In 1892 she left Stuttgart for Berlin, where she had her most succesful time as an actress at the Deutsche theater.

In Berlin she knew Maximilian Harden and Walther Rathenau. In 1903 she met Gustav Lindemann and together they planned a national theatre in Weimar that would be designed by Henri van de Velde. The plan failed because Grand duke Wilhelm Ernst didn't support it. After another failed attempt to found a theatre in Darmstadt they succeeded in Düsseldorf, where they started the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. They combined it with a theatre academy where Gustaf Gründgens was a pupil.

In Düsseldorf they cooperated with Hans Franck, Gustav Landauer, Berthold Viertel and many others. In 1907 they married and in 1908 they moved to the Haus Draengenburg in Urdenbach. During the crisis of the early 1920s they were forced to close their theatre from 1922 and 1924 and they separated. The theatre and the academy we continued after 1924. Dumont-Lindemann was close to several young actresses including Fita Benkhoff, Hanni Hoessrich and Luise Rainer, implicating that she may have been bisexual or lesbian. She died in Düsseldorf in 1932.

Family
• Husband: Lindemann, Gustav (1907-1932)

Related persons
• knew Harden, Maximilian
• was teacher of Kemp, Paul

Images

The grave of Louise Dumont-Lindemann at the Nordfriedhof, Düsseldorf.
Picture by Androom (17 Jul 2015)

 

Sources
Louise Dumont – Wikipedia


Dumoulin le Keuche, Edmond Luc, chevalier

Published: 05 Jun 2021
Last update: 06 Apr 2022