Entry #16

Richard Max Otto Lindner was born 27 April 1890 in Dresden, Saxony, Germany, the middle son of Emil Max Heinrich Lindner and Anna Marie Kessler. He had two brothers, Max, who was older by two years, and Kurt, who was younger by three.  This was my Grandpa Lindner and he was known to his friends and family as “Otto.”  I am not sure if he liked his given name, because he always formally signed his name as “R.O. Lindner.” Grandpa liked to write his capital O’s with lots of concentric circles.  I will write about Otto Lindner this week in honor of his upcoming birthday.

My grandpa was a real jokester. He loved recount to his grandchildren about the trouble he had gotten into when he was a boy. One story was about the new white suit his parents bought him. It may have been purchased for Easter, I don’t recall. He wore his brand-new white suit to visit the zoo. Otto said that he was all shined up and spiffy and feeling pretty proud of himself. He managed to get too close to the llama pen and was staring down a big llama, when it hurled a big, green, slimy wad of spit at him. Now, as you can imagine, this ruined Otto’s new suit and he said that his mother was not pleased. I am not sure if he had done anything to annoy the llama, but it seems probable.

George Dorings and Otto Lindner (right) 1903

There were other stories that fit the behavior of a mischievous child. I am sure Otto must have been a trial to his mother and father. What amazes me is that, unlike most adults, Grandpa Lindner never seemed to have outgrown his penchant for pranks or his ability to find trouble.

Case in point: Otto Lindner served in the German navy in 1911, before he came to the United States. Fortunately, I don’t think he did much more than practice maneuvers from what I can tell. Apparently, he spent most of his time working in the boiler room; I am pretty sure he was a mechanic. One day, a junior officer, hoping to sneak off on a break, asked Otto to take over the piloting the ship. My grandfather said that he then proceeded to accidentally throw the ship into reverse and backed it straight into the dock. “Did it do a lot of damage,” I asked? “Oh, yes,” he replied. “The dock was destroyed.” Otto thought this was hilarious. He would grin ear to ear, laugh with a sheepish grin and then hit himself in the forehead (a gesture that I read as meaning, “What I dummkopf I am!”) I loved my grandfather’s self-deprecating attitude. He always seemed to be amused himself.

Otto Lindner (center) with shipmates 1911

Later, when he worked for the Cincinnati Shaper Company as a machinist, Grandpa decided to play a joke on his co-workers. He rigged up a machine so he could feed in a one dollar bill on one side and it would spit out a twenty on the other side. He told everyone he could transform ones into twenties and demonstrated this to his friends, but something went wrong and the twenty dollar bill got caught in the machinery. One dollar went in, but the twenty came out mangled. Grandpa would tell the story, chuckle heartily, and hit himself in the forehead again. Twenty dollars was a lot of money at the time, but I guess Otto was able to take the currency to the bank and get the bill replaced with a fresh one.

Then, there was the rubber NOSE…We had endless hours of fun with the nose – a giant honker attached to a pair of glasses. It was pretty realistic for its day. Grandpa first introduced the nose to us by coming out of the bedroom wearing it. My sister and I giggled uncontrollably. With my two cousins, Ken and Steve, we all took turns wearing it. There was always a lot of teasing, too. “Are you wearing the nose? We can’t even tell it from your real nose,” we would taunt one another. Eventually, Grandpa let my sister and I have the nose. I remember us taking turns wearing it when we drove on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We would try to get the attention of truckers or passengers in other vehicles. Most people would laugh and wave, but sometimes they would just stare or quickly look away. My mom said that people just could not believe that any little girl could possibly be that ugly. The nose provided hours of entertainment for my family until it finally discolored, and I think eventually dry rotted and crumbled.  I learned that the NOSE predated my time in this world as evidenced by its use by Otto to dress up as a monster in 1952:

My dad (John Biermann) and Grandpa as “The Monster”

Wearing the NOSE, a wig and hat- 1952

From time to time my mother reminded me that Otto was not all fun and games. My grandmother, Alma, died quite young, leaving him with two small girls; mom was just two at the time of her mother’s death. Grandpa remarried Effie Daughters, who was nine years his senior.  I don’t think he married for love, but they seemed fond of one another.  The Lindners, like so many others, hit hard times during the depression. Otto had a hardware store and they had to live upstairs in an apartment above the business. I think grandpa eventually lost the store. Mom said that Otto was a strict father and I know that the family was very frugal. Otto also watched Germany destroyed by Hitler and Nazism, his home town of Dresden annihilated, and his mother killed in the horrific fire-bombing of that city. Yet, through all of this, Otto Lindner’s indomitable sense of humor was preserved.

Alma and Otto (left and center) with unknown friend

Although all of my family is of German descent, Otto Lindner was the only grandparent born in Germany. He arrived in the United States aboard the Steamship U.S.S. Grant in April 1912 to be with his recently widowed grandmother (Christiane Charlotte Püschel Lindner) in Cincinnati. Whenever Grandpa talked about his home, he spoke about what a lovely city Dresden was when he was growing up. He was very proud of how cultured the city had been with its sumptuous parks and gardens, elegant buildings and wonderful public art. That was all in the past, though. He would shake his head wistfully and remind us it was all destroyed when Dresden was bombed.

Richard Max Otto Lindner lived to be 98; he died 23 November 1988 in Cincinnati.

Marian Lindner Faller and Otto Lindner             Otto Lindner – New Year’s Eve 198?