Balthasar Kestner

Balthasar Kestner (born January 6, 1561 in Pulsnitz , Oberlausitz , † December 23, 1633 in Bückeburg ) was court tailor and confidante of the count and later appointed prince Ernst zu Holstein-Schaumburg and after his death Bückeburg councilor and chamberlain .

Life

Having become an orphan at the age of ten, the son of the city judge Caspar Kestner learned the tailoring trade at the age of 15 and set out on a journey. First it went to all German imperial cities, then for nine years to Italy ( Venice , Padua , Florence , Milan , Naples and Rome ). From Venice he took the ship across to Dalmatia and migrated to Constantinople , today's Istanbul . When he returned to Venice on the ship of the Venetian Ambassador , Count Ernst, who was staying there, employed him as a court tailor.

The relationship between the Count and Kestner must have been extraordinarily cordial. Ernst von Schaumburg, who was only eight years older than Balthasar Kestner, is said to have taken on a kind of father role and declared several times that as long as he had something himself, he should not suffer a defect either. Prince Ernst later also became the godfather of the firstborn son of his body tailor. Balthasar Kestner, for his part, was a loyal servant to the prince for about thirty years, until his death in 1622.

In 1602 the count gave him a stately house in Bückeburg as a free hereditary property and gave him the maid of the Countesses of Schaumburg as his wife. After Prince Ernst's death in 1622, at the age of 61, Kestner was accepted into the council of the then 500-inhabitant royal town of Bückeburg and appointed treasurer, an office he held until his death in 1633. Balthasar Kestner and his wife Catharina Bohne are buried near the Jetenburg Church in Bückeburg.

meaning

Balthasar Kestner is the progenitor of a family from which several historical personalities emerged ( August Kestner , diplomat , patron and archaeologist , Johann Christian Kestner , archivist and husband of Werthers Lotte , the law professor and Leibniz correspondent Henrich Ernst Kestner , the composer and museum founder Hermann Kestner , the Sculptor Erich Schmidt-Kestner and others).

literature

• Rüdiger RE Fock: The Kestner. A German-French-Swiss family makes history (s) . Warendorf: Schnell Buch und Druck 2009. ISBN 978-3877167069 .
• Johan Prange. 1636. Christian funeral sermon by Balthasar Kestner . Rinteln: Lucius. 1636 [Nds. State and Univ.Bibl. Goettingen Conc. fun. 134.4]
• Joseph Prinz: The grave monuments of the Jetenburg Chapel near Bückeburg as a source of family history. P. 32 ff. In: Special publications of the Ostfälische Familienkdl. Come on. No. 17. Marktschellenberg: Degener. 1939