Georg Büchner
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Karl Georg Büchner (October 17, 1813 – February 19, 1837) was a German dramatist and writer of prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Georg Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany. It is often believed that, had he not died so early, he might have attained the sigificance of the likes of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.
Born in Goddelau near Darmstadt, Hesse-Darmstadt, as the son of a doctor, Büchner frequented a Humanist secondary school that focused on languages, including modern languages (French, Italian and English). Nevertheless Büchner studied medicine in Strasbourg.
In 1828 he became interested in politics and joined a circle of William Shakespeare aficionados which later on probably became the Giessen and Darmstadt section of the "Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte" (Society for Human Rights). In Strasbourg, he immersed himself in French literature and political thought. In 1835, Büchner translated two works by Victor Hugo, Lucrèce Borgia and Marie Tudor. Two years later, his dissertation, "Mémoire sur le Système Nerveux du Barbeaux (Cyprinus barbus L.)" was published in Paris and Strasbourg. He was influenced by the utopian communist theories of François-Noël Babeuf and Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon.
While he continued his studies in Giessen he established a secret society dedicated to the revolutionary cause. He printed leaflets called Der Hessische Landbote, aimed at his perceived political education and indoctrination of peasants. Charged with treason, Büchner fled to France.
In 1835, his first play, Danton's Tod (Danton's Death), about the French revolution, was published, followed by Lenz (first partly published in Karl Gutzkow's and Wienberg's Deutsche Revue, which was quickly banned). In 1836 his second play, Leonce and Lena, followed (about the nobility). His unfinished and most famous play, Woyzeck, was the first literary work in German whose main characters were members of the working class. Published posthumously, it became the basis for Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck (premiered 1925).
Büchner was one of the lesser known German authors when Karl-Emil Franzos edited his works, which later on were a major influence on naturalism. Arnold Zweig called Lenz, Büchner's only work of prose, the "beginning of modern European prose". Lenz is a novella based on the life of the Sturm und Drang poet Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz.
He died in Zürich, shortly after he had begun lecturing at the university.
External links
Editions
- Georg Büchner, Werke und Briefe. Münchner Ausgabe (dtv, 1997). ISBN 3423123745.
Translations
- Georg Büchner, Complete Plays and Prose, trans. Carl Richard Mueller (Hill and Wang, 1963)
- Georg Büchner, The Complete Plays: Danton's Death; Leonce and Lena; Woyzeck; Lenz; the Hessian Messenger; on Cranial Nerves; Selected Letters trans. John Reddick (Penguin Classics, 1993) ISBN 0140445862.
- Georg Büchner, Danton's Death, Leonce and Lena and Woyzeck, trans. Victor Price, (Oxford World's Classics, 1998). ISBN 0192836501.
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