Werner Peiner

Werner Peiner (1897–1984), volunteer in WWI, studied painting at the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie.
In the 1920s he painted mostly in the style of the Neue Sachlichkeit. In 1933 he became Professor
Monumentmalerie at the Düsseldorfer Akademie. His art was especially appreciated by Hermann
Göring: his painting ‘Europe and the Bull’, 1937, hung at the head of Görings bed. In 1933 he created
the famous ‘Deutsche Erde’, which was given to Hitler, who hung it in the New Chancellery. It was
displayed at the 1934 Biennale in Venice and in 1938 at the GDK and in Berlin by the Preussische
Akademie der Künste.
From 1937 to 1944 he made 19 designs for huge Gobelin tapestries (10 meters by 5.4 meters), which
were meant to be placed in the marble gallery of the Neu Kanzlei. Peiner was represented in the
Great German Art Exhibitions with 33 works. In 1938 the GDK mounted a special display of paintings
by Werner Peiner, the Sonderschau.
In 1944 Adolf Hitler included him in the Sonderliste der Gottbegnadeten-Liste.
Eight paintings and twelve huge gobelins by Werner Peiner were part of the Herman Göring
Collection and destinated to be displayed in the ‘Norddeutsche Galerie’.
The Louvre museum holds two gobelin tapestries by Werner Peiner, meant for Görings Carinnhall: ‘Le
Baldaquin’ and ‘Globe Terrestre’. The Louvre also holds the Peiner gobelin tapestries ‘Char de
Chevaux’ and ‘Char de Taureax’, both tapestries hung in the official residence of Foreign Minister Von
Ribbentrop in Berlin, they were confiscated in 1945/49 in Germany by the France.