Charlotte Buff

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Charlotte Buff

Charlotte Sophie Henriette Buff (born January 11, 1753 in Wetzlar ; † January 16, 1828 in Hanover ) was the model of Lotte in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther .

Life

Charlotte was the second of sixteen children from the renown Kastnereiverwalters (1740) and German-Order - bailiff (1755) Heinrich Adam Buff (1711-1795) and the Magdalena Ernestina Feyler (1731-1771). Her nephew, son of her brother Wilhelm Karl Ludwig Buff, was the chemist Heinrich Buff .

Charlotte was engaged to be engaged in 1768, but did not marry the electoral Hanoverian legation secretary Johann Christian Kestner until April 4, 1773 . In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Kestner family belonged to the so-called Pretty Families , who were at the top of the bourgeoisie in the Electorate of Hanover. Since the early death of her mother in 1771, Charlotte ran her father's household and looked after her ten younger siblings.

Charlotte Kestner b. Buff. Pastel painting by Johann Heinrich Schröder
Charlotte Kestner with a blue hood ; Old age portrait by Goethe's Lotte Kestner, 1820;
Christian Ahrbeck after Johann Ludwig Hansen

Goethe got to know "Lotte" at a dance festival: On June 9, 1772, Goethe's great-aunt Lange from Wetzlar organized a ball in the Jägerhaus (now Goethehaus ) in Volpertshausen , a village near Wetzlar, probably because of the birthday of Karoline Buff, Charlotte's older sister, and the upcoming engagement of Caroline to the son of Mrs. Lange, Dr. jur. Christian Dietz. Goethe was supposed to pick up Charlotte Buff at this ball. At the time he was actually courting 17-year-old Johannette Lange. But as soon as Goethe met Charlotte, Johannette was forgotten. Lotte charmed him both with her outward appearance and her open manner. As described in Werther , he danced with her the whole evening, and he was impressed how Lotte distracted the party with a game during the storm.

Not on the day of the ball , as described in Werther , but only on the next day the “lovely scene” took place in the Buff house in Wetzlar, which Goethe so enthusiastic about. When he came back to the Deutschordenshof, Lotte was just about to cut her siblings' bread. The Wetzlar painter Ferdinand Raab immortalized this sight in a painting, made around 1865, after a copper engraving by Wilhelm von Kaulbach , which can be seen in the lottery house in Wetzlar. Goethe describes the experience in the Werther with the words:

"What a delight it is for my soul to see her in the company of dear, cheerful children, her eight siblings!"

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Werther's suffering

Goethe soon got along very well with Lotte's siblings too. Even with Kestner, Charlotte's fiancé, he had a very good relationship after his return, he even claims in Werther that he was Albert after Lotte the dearest in the world. Nevertheless, the hopelessness of a relationship with Lotte burdened Goethe so much that he left Wetzlar again. Unable to curb affection and jealousy, Goethe left the city after saying goodbye to both of them and processed the separation in literary terms in the epistolary novel Die Leiden des Junge Werther , published in 1774 .

Kestner's house at Grosse Wallstrasse 14 ; to the right of her nearby tomb designed by Laves in the garden cemetery on Marienstraße,
multicolored artist postcard by Otto Pilzecker, around 1898
Former iron enclosure of Charlotte Kestner's tomb with the grave crosses of her great-granddaughter Maria Ernestine Charlotte Laves and her grandson Georg Wilhelm Carl Theodor Kestner;
Postcard No. 756 from F. Astholz jun. , around 1900
Tomb at the garden cemetery in Hanover
Memorial stone in Wetzlar

Charlotte married Kestner in 1773 and lived with him in Hanover in the Aegidienneustadt . She became the mother of eight sons and four daughters and managed the large housekeeping on Aegidienstraße, later on Grosse Wallstraße (today Georgswall) . Even after her husband died in 1800, she remained a point of reference for the widely dispersed family and took an active part in their advancement and well-being.

She continued to have contact with Goethe by letters and arranged for him to help her sons (including August Kestner ). In September 1816 she traveled for a few weeks to Weimar, where her youngest sister was married, and also met Goethe. The reunion, however, was unique and formal. Thomas Mann made it literary in his novel Lotte in Weimar , published in 1939 .

Charlotte Kestner's grave is in the garden cemetery in Hanover. The classicist grave monument comes from the husband of her granddaughter, the Hanoverian architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves .

Direct descendants of Charlotte Kestner now live in Germany, Switzerland and France. According to the latest research, there are over 1200 descendants of Charlotte and her siblings to date.

children

  • Georg Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Kestner (1774–1867), archivist, banker, art and autograph collector, married to Henriette Partz
  • Wilhelm Georg Konrad Arnold Kestner (1775–1848), bailiff in Hagen , married to Luise Iffland
  • Philipp Karl Kestner (1776–1846), factory owner in Thann , Alsace
  • Georg August Christian Kestner (1777–1853), diplomat and art collector
  • Theodor Friedrich Arnold Kestner (1779–1847), physician, city physician in Frankfurt am Main , married to Marie Lippert
  • Charlotte Kestner (* † 1783)
  • Eduard Kestner (1784–1823), factory owner in Thann, Alsace
  • Hans Ernst Hermann Septinus Kestner (-Lippert) (1786–1871), Royal Hanoverian Privy Councilor
  • Charlotte Kestner (1788–1877), lived single in Basel
  • Louise Amalie Henriette Antoinette Kestner (1791–1804)
  • Clara Sophie Kestner (1793–1866), conventual in the Fräuleinstift Marienwerder
  • Friedrich Kestner (1795–1872), merchant in Le Havre , royal Hanover consul general, married to Mathilde Doormann

Great nephew

reception

Novels

Movies

Commemorations

literature

Web links

Commons : Charlotte Buff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfdietrich Rasch:  Buff, Charlotte (Lotte) Sophie Henriette, married Kestner. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 8 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Klaus Mlynek : Pretty families. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover . P. 310.
  3. ↑ Information Lottehaus Wetzlar
  4. ↑ Lottehaus painting by Ferdinand Raab (accessed February 15, 2014)
  5. ↑ Aegidienstraße disappeared after the Second World War and ran in the extension of today's Heinrich-Kümmel-Straße towards Aegi.
  6. ↑ Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Unchanged edition. KG Saur, Bern 1993, first volume A – L, Sp. 400, ISBN 3-907820-70-3 .
  7. ^ Klaus Mlynek : Goethe Society. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 224
personal data
SURNAME Buff, Charlotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Buff, Charlotte Sophie Henriette (full name); Kestner, Charlotte (name from 1773)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Model of Lotte in Goethe's work The Sorrows of Young Werther
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1753
PLACE OF BIRTH Wetzlar
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1828
Place of death Hanover