Kestner was the son of
civil servant Johann Christian Kestner and his wife
Charlotte Buff. From 1796 to 1799 Kestner studied law at the
University of Göttingen and was immediately afterwards called up as a
Vernehmungsrichter (interrogation judge) at the court in
Hanover. 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
Rome and
Naples. Also he was a
diplomat of Hanover to the
Holy See in
Rome. As an art lover, he gathered small objects from
Egyptian as well as
Greco-Roman 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 ==