Charlotte Buff

Sophie Henriette Charlotte Buff ( * January 11, 1753 in Wetzlar, † January 16, 1828 in Hannover) the model of Lotte was 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 ) Adam Heinrich Buff ( 1711-1795 ) and Magdalena Ernestina Feyler ( 1731-1771 ). Her nephew, son of her brother Wilhelm Karl Ludwig Buff, was the chemist Heinrich Buff.

Charlotte was engaged in 1768, but married only on April 4, 1773 the Hanoverian legation secretary Johann Christian Kestner. The Kestner family belonged in the 18th and 19th centuries, the so-called Pretty families. Since the early death of his mother in 1771 Charlotte led his father's household and supplied her nine younger siblings.

Goethe learned " Lotte" on a dance festival know: On June 9, 1772 held Goethe in Wetzlar Great Aunt Long ball in the hunting lodge (now the Goethe House ) in Volpertshausen, a village near Wetzlar, presumably because of the birthday of Caroline Buff, the older sister of Charlotte and the upcoming engagement Karolines with the son of Ms. Long, Dr. jur. Christian Dietz. At this ball Charlotte Buff Goethe should pick up. He was courting at the time actually the 17 -year-old Johannette Lange. But as soon as Goethe Charlotte had met, Johannette was forgotten. Lotte charmed him both by their outward appearance as well as its open kind described in Werther, he danced all night with her, and it impressed him much as Lotte distract the hard society during the storm with a game.

Not, as described in Werther, the day of the ball, but only on the day it was the " lovely scene " in the home Buff in Wetzlar, Goethe so enthusiastic. When Goethe came to the Deutschordenshof again, Lotte was just her brothers and sisters to cut the bread. This sight, immortalized by the Wetzlar painter Ferdinand Raab in a painting, made ​​around 1865, after an engraving by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, which can be seen in Lottehaus in Wetzlar. Goethe describes the experience in Werther with the words:

" What a delight this is for my soul to see them in the circle of love, merry children, her eight siblings! "

Even with the siblings Lotte understood Goethe soon very good. Even at Kestner, the fiancée Charlotte, he had after his return a very good relationship, he claims in Werther even that he had been to Lotte dearest in the world Albert. Yet Goethe loaded the hopelessness of a relationship with Lotte so much that he left Wetzlar again. Unable to restrain affection and jealousy, Goethe left after a epistolary goodbye to two Wetzlar and processed to separate the literary in 1774 published the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Charlotte Kestner married in 1773 and lived with him in Hannover in the Aegidienneustadt. She was the mother of eight sons and four daughters and led the big house being in the Aegidienstraße, later in the Great Wall Street (now George Wall ). Even after her husband died in 1800, she remained a reference point of the far-flung family and took an active part in the advancement and welfare of proportion.

With Goethe had further epistolary contact and caused that he was her sons ( incl. August Kestner ) help. In September 1816, she spent a few weeks after Weimar, where her youngest sister was married, and also met Goethe. However, the reunion was unique and formal. Thomas Mann has designed it in his 1939 novel, Lotte in Weimar sensitive, but also with some literary freedom.

Charlotte Kestner's grave is located on the garden cemetery in Hanover. The Classicist grave monument dates from the husband of her granddaughter, the Hanover architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves.

Direct descendants of Charlotte Kestner now live in Germany, Switzerland and France. According to the latest research, there is still more than 1200 descendants of Charlotte and her siblings.

Reception

Novels

  • Thomas Mann: Lotte in Weimar, 1939

Movies

Commemorations

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