Walter Johannes Lindner

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Walter Johannes Lindner (born November 25, 1956 in Munich ) is a German diplomat . He has been the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to India since 2019 . From 2017 to 2019 he was one of two permanent state secretaries in the Federal Foreign Office under Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas .

Life

After graduating from high school in 1976, Lindner did community service , followed by (incomplete) music studies at the Richard Strauss Conservatory and the Joe Haider Jazz School in Munich, as well as in Graz and at the Berklee Jazz School in Boston, and went on a world tour in 1977. He then studied law with a minor in political science and Spanish at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich until 1986 . From 1986 to 1988 he completed his legal clerkship in Munich and also worked as a translator for Spanish and Portuguese .

Lindner is married for the second time and has one daughter. He is a member of the SPD and speaks English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish. He is an active musician, arranger and music producer and has released 6 CDs. He has mastered the following instruments: piano, flute, saxophone and guitar. He often wears his long hair in a ponytail.

career

After joining the diplomatic service in 1988, he was employed until 1990 as an attaché in the legal department of the Foreign Office in Bonn and until 1992 as a press officer at the embassy in Ankara . From 1992 to 1995 Lindner was permanent representative of the ambassador in Managua ( Nicaragua ). After a further assignment in the Foreign Office (advisor in the press department) he was Counselor at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York from 1998 to 2001 . From 2001 to 2002 he was Deputy Head of Division GF 08 (Human Rights Task Force) in the Federal Foreign Office. From 2002 to 2006 Lindner was the spokesman for the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin under Minister Joschka Fischer , then from 2006 to 2009 Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Kenya . The responsibility ( accreditation ) also included representation in the states of Somalia , Burundi and Seychelles .

From 2009 to 2010 he headed the Crisis Response Center at the Federal Foreign Office, before he succeeded Matthias Mülmenstädt from November 2010 to June 2012 as Africa Policy Officer at the Federal Foreign Office. From July 2012 he was the German ambassador to Venezuela. On October 1, 2014, he was appointed the Federal Government's Special Representative for Ebola . His appointment as ambassador to Venezuela was suspended for the duration of this temporary assignment. From July 2015 to the beginning of 2017, Walter Lindner was ambassador in Pretoria ( South Africa ) with a secondary accreditation for Lesotho and Swaziland . From February 2017 to February 2019 he was State Secretary in the Federal Foreign Office.

In April 2019, he replaced Martin Ney as ambassador at the German embassy in India . His official visit to the radical Hindu or fascist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in July 2019 sparked protests and an online petition demanding that he be recalled as ambassador. However, this found (as of June 2020) less than 5,000 supporters. Lindner responded to the criticism in an interview with The Week magazine.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. A State Secretary for the Foreign Ministry , accessed on February 22, 2019
  2. The fight against the epidemic , in: ZEIT magazine from June 1, 2015
  3. Majid Sattar : Africa connoisseur. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 4, 2014, p. 10.
  4. Towards the rising sun by land - How Walter J. Lindner, German Ambassador to India, discovered the country for himself in the 1970s >> Video with interview. Germany portal, accessed on August 16, 2020 .
  5. The coolest diplomat ( Memento from December 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Frankfurter Rundschau from December 2, 2009
  6. Lindner is the new Africa officer ( memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), notification from November 10, 2010
  7. Walter Linder back , message from May 14, 2012
  8. Politics as the Art of the Personal , news from May 25, 2012
  9. ^ Federal government appoints Ebola special commissioner. spiegel.de, October 1, 2014, accessed October 19, 2014
  10. Foreign Office State Secretary Lindner , accessed on February 24, 2017
  11. German ambassador causes outrage visiting fascist Indian group. , The Jerusalem Post, July 26, 2019, accessed June 4, 2020
  12. ↑ Sign the petition. Retrieved June 5, 2020 (German).
  13. RSS a part of the Indian mosaic: German ambassador who visited Nagpur reacts to criticism. Retrieved June 5, 2020 .
predecessor Office successor
Bernd Braun German ambassador to Kenya
2006–2009
Margit Hellwig-Bötte
Georg Clemens Dick German Ambassador to Venezuela
2012–2015
Stefan Herzberg
Horst Friday German Ambassador to South Africa
2015–2017
Martin Schäfer
Martin Ney German ambassador to India
since 2019