In the 18th and 19th centuries the Kestner family was one of the
families at court (). As a young
Brunswick-Lüneburg legation secretary in the
imperial chamber court () in
Wetzlar from 1767 to 1773, he met and became engaged to Charlotte Buff, a daughter of the bailiff of the local .
Goethe also worked at the same court during 1772 and got to know both Kestner and Buff. Goethe fell in love with Buff, nicknaming her "Lotte", even though she was already engaged. This love and
Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem's suicide using Kestner's borrowed pistols were both used by Goethe in
The Sorrows of Young Werther, which first appeared in 1774. Buff and Kestner married in 1773 in Wetzlar and then moved to
Hanover, where he became vice-archivist and privy councillor to the
Hanoverian court. He and Buff had twelve children, with Goethe acting as godfather to the eldest son Georg, who followed his father as an archivist. Another son,
August, was a diplomat and art collector. The family lived on the then on (now known as ). Kestner died on a business trip to Lüneburg and his grave no longer survives. His and his wife's documents are now in the
Stadtarchiv Hannover. == Works ==