Georg Christian August Kestner (28 November 1777, in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

– 5 March 1853, in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

) was a German diplomat and art collector.

Life

Kestner was the son of

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

Johann Christian Kestner Johann Georg Christian Kestner (28 August 174124 May 1800) was a German lawyer and archivist. He is also notable as the model for Lotte's husband Albert in ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' by Goethe, with Kestner's fiancée Charlotte Buff used a ...

and his wife

Charlotte Buff Charlotte Buff (11 January 1753, Wetzlar – 16 January 1828, Hanover) was a youthful acquaintance of the poet Goethe, who fell in love with her. She rejected him and instead married Johann Christian Kestner, vice-archivist and privy councillor ...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as t ...

met and fell in love with Charlotte while she was engaged to Johann. Repeated rejections by Buff partially provided the youthful suffering that Goethe lets the hero of his work (''

The Sorrows of Young Werther ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (; german: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is a 1774 epistolary novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, which appeared as a revised edition in 1787. It was one of the main novels in the '' Sturm und Drang'' period in Ge ...

'') experience.Mandelkow, Karl Robert (1962). ''Goethes Briefe''. Vol. 1: ''Briefe der Jahre 1764-1786''. Christian Wegner Verlag. p. 590-592 From 1796 to 1799 Kestner studied law at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

and was immediately afterwards called up as a ''Vernehmungsrichter'' (interrogation judge) at the court in

. In 1803 Kestner was appointed 'secret office-secretary in the civil service'. As such, he made his living from 1818 to 1849, among other things, as an official envoy and Minister-resident in

and

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adm ...

. Also he was a

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or interna ...

of Hanover to the

Holy See The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of R ...

. As an art lover, he gathered small objects from Egyptian as well as

Greco-Roman The Greco-Roman civilization (; also Greco-Roman culture; spelled Graeco-Roman in the Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and countries that culturally—and so historically—were di ...

art. He, Theodor Panofka and Otto Magnus von Stackelberg founded the "Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica" in 1829, later to become the German Archaeological Institute, and was in 1838 entrusted with its direction as its secretary-general. After his retirement from the civil service, Kestner lived in Rome until his death on 5 March 1853. The Kestner-Museum in Hanover is named after him.

References

Works

*''Römische Studien'' (Berlin: Decker, 1850) *''Sulla: ein Trauerspiel in 5 Aufzügen'' (Hannover: Zahn, 1855) *''Über die Nachahmung in der Malerei'' (Frankfurt a.M., 1818) *''Wem gehört die Kunst'' (1830)

Bibliography

* Marie Jorns: ''August Kestner und seine Zeit. 1777-1853. Das glückliche Leben des Diplomaten, Kunstsammlers und Mäzens in Hannover und Rom''. Aus Briefen und Tagebüchern zusammengestellt. Hannover: Madsack 1964. * ''100 Jahre Kestner-Museum Hannover. 1889-1989''. Hrsg. von Ulrich Gehrig. Hannover: Kestner-Museum 1989. * ''Auf den Spuren von August Kestner''. Katalog zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung, 6. März bis 20. Juli 2003, Kestner-Museum Hannover. Hannover: Kestner-Museum 2003. (Museum Kestnerianum. 5)

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kestner, August 1777 births 1853 deaths Jurists from Hanover German art collectors 19th-century art collectors German diplomats People from the Electorate of Hanover University of Göttingen alumni Burials in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome