German Literature: Biographies

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre Further reading

Georg Büchner

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. | 2008 | Copyright

Georg Büchner , 1813-37, German dramatist. He was a student of medicine and a political agitator. He died at the age of 24, leaving a powerful drama, Danton's Death (1835, tr. 1928), a pessimistic view of the French Revolution and revolutionary politics; a fragmentary tragedy, Woyzeck (1837, tr. 1928), a psychological study of an alienated character that Alban Berg adapted for his opera Wozzeck ; and a comedy, Leonce and Lena (1850, tr. 1928). Büchner greatly admired the poet J. M. R. Lenz , whom he made the hero of a novella, Lenz (1838, tr. 1955), which he never completed. His plays, unorthodox in subject and style, were not staged until many decades after his death.

Bibliography: See collections of his plays ed. by V. Price (tr. 1971) and M. Hamburger (tr. 1972); studies by A. H. J. Knight (1951) and R. Hauser (1974).

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Büchner, Georg

The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre | 1996 | | Copyright

Büchner, Georg (1813–37), German dramatist who died young of typhoid fever. Unknown during his lifetime, he has grown steadily in reputation since he was discovered by Hauptmann in the 1890s and taken as a model by adherents of Expressionism. His first play, Dantons Tod (Danton's Death), not acted until 1903, portrays the struggle for power between Robespierre and Danton during the early years of the French Revolution. It was produced in translation in New York by Orson Welles in 1938 and in London in 1959 (also by the National Theatre in 1971 and 1982). Büchner's only other complete play was a comedy, Leonce und Lena, first performed in 1895. Woyzeck, of which only an unfinished version remains, was first produced in 1913. Alban Berg made it the subject of his opera Wozzeck in 1925.

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PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Büchner, Georg." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Büchner, Georg." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. (February 10, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-BchnerGeorg.html

PHYLLIS HARTNOLL and PETER FOUND. "Büchner, Georg." The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 1996. Retrieved February 10, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O79-BchnerGeorg.html

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Free newspaper and magazine articles

	Buchner drama slowed by emotional disconnection.(Time Out!) Newspaper article from: Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL); 11/17/2006
	Wild 'Woyzeck' not for fainthearted.(VARIETY) Newspaper article from: Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN); 10/27/2010
	A triumph with power and pathos ..... Wozzeck Alban Berg Royal Opera House,... Newspaper article from: The Mail on Sunday (London, England); 3/5/2006