Lempertz's roots go back to 1802 when Johann Matthias Heberle (1775–1840) opened a printing company in Cologne in 1802, which was later expanded to include an “antiquarian and auction house”.

As more paintings by old masters and applied arts were auctioned, a branch was opened in Cologne in 1902, which was initially located at Domhof 6 in the house of the Archbishop's Diocesan Museum.

Lempertz company acquired the classicist house Fastenrat at Neumarkt 3, corner of Cäcilienstraße 48, from the estate of Johannes Fastenrath.

December 1939, the collection of the Jewish art dealer Walter Westfeld (1889–1943) arrested by Nazis and plundered, was sold off at Lempertz.

With its representative offices in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo and Shanghai, the Kunsthaus Lempertz is one of the most important art auction houses in Europe today.

In addition, Lempertz has long acted as an intermediary between private collectors and museums and has been able to convey important cultural assets to public institutions.

[21][22][23][24] In May 1981 Lempertz auctioned between 20 and 30 artworks, for one million DM, from Albert Speer's possession, using the anonymous provenance indication “From private property”.

[25][26] In 2008, the heirs of Walter Westfeld, who was murdered in Auschwitz, sued Germany for the restitution of an art collection that including paintings by El Greco and Peter Paul Rubens, which had been seized by the Nazis and auctioned at Lempertz in 1939.

[27] According to NBC News the "Lempertz auction house in Cologne, Germany, claimed the property was destroyed during bombing in WWII, but the lawsuit includes a copy of the December 1939 sale catalog and price list.

"[28] In 2007, "Portrait of a Musician Playing a Bagpipe" by an unknown Dutch artist, originally from the Max Stern collection, was sold at Lempertz, which had conducted the forced sale in 1937 to a London dealer, Philip Mould Ltd., who then sold it to Lawrence Steigrad in NY where it was spotted by the Holocaust Claims Processing Office.

[29][30] In 2009 New York art dealer Richard Feigen restituted, to the heirs of Max Stern, an Italian baroque painting of St. Jerome in the Wilderness, attributed to Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619), that he had acquired at Lempertz.

[32] In October 2010 Lempertz auctioned forged paintings by Wolfgang Beltracchi, including forgeries attributed to Heinrich Campendonk and Max Pechstein from a nonexistent "Jäger" collection, including the forgery of Campendonk's “Rotes Picture with horses ”at a record price of 2.4 million euros.