Woyzeck Study Guide

Georg Büchner was born on October 17, 1813, in what was then part of the Grand Duchy of Hesse (part of modern-day Riedstadt in Germany). He attended the Darmstadt gymnasium, a secondary school, where he became interested in politics. He moved to Strasbourg in 1831 to study medicine. During this time, Büchner continued to develop his interest in politics, and he was particularly drawn to the communist theories of François-Noël Babeuf and Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. He and the theologian Friedrich Ludwig Weidig published the revolutionary pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote (The Hessian Courier) in 1834, which condemned practices of injustice in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. They were charged with treason as a result. Weidig was arrested and died in prison, but Büchner managed to flee to Strasbourg. There, he wrote his most important works, including the novella Lenz and the unfinished play Woyzeck, which was published posthumously. In 1836, after completing his studies in medicine, Büchner moved to Zürich to work as a lecturer in anatomy at the University of Zürich. He died of typhus the following year. Büchner all but faded into obscurity following his early death, but his work was re-discovered toward the end of the nineteenth century and would subsequently go on to influence the naturalist and expressionist theater movements of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Büchner based Woyzeck on the real crime of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a wigmaker from Leipzig who murdered Christiane Woost, a widow with whom he had been living, in 1821. Before his execution, Woyzeck told a clergyman that he had experienced hallucinations and heard voices telling him to murder Woost. However, the physician who examined Woyzeck, Dr. J.C.A. Clarus, deemed him sane and fit to stand trial. Clarus’s findings generated considerable controversy, prompting him to publish an article in defense of his choice in a medical journal, which likely was how Büchner heard about the case. Woyzeck was eventually tried, found guilty, and beheaded for his crime. Like the protagonist of Büchner’s play, the real Woyzeck’s life was defined by hardship and struggle. Orphaned at a young age, he drifted throughout Europe, working menial jobs until enlisting as a soldier in various armies. Thematically, Woyzeck may be read as Büchner’s commentary on the political atmosphere of Europe in the aftermath of the French Revolution (1789–1799). The end of the eighteenth century had been a time characterized by democratic expansion and a push for human rights and religious freedom, but the horrors of the French Revolution brought many of these liberal projects to a halt across Europe. Government oppression of progressive thinkers was particularly harsh in German princedoms. In the 1820s, for instance, the Karlsbad Decrees, which outlawed the publication of writings containing antiauthoritarian views, led to the persecution and death of thousands of intellectuals.

Georg Büchner is associated with Young Germany, a movement of young German writers who published works in the first half of the nineteenth century, roughly between 1830 and 1850. Young Germany writers wrote works that espoused principles of democracy, rationality, and equality. Heinrich Heine is one of the movement’s writers; he is best known for his lyric poetry, which was set to music by composers Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Another writer associated with the movement is the satirist Ludwig Börne, whose most famous works include Denkrede auf Jean Paul (1826) and Menzel der Franzosenfresser (1837). Büchner’s work influenced writers of the naturalist and expressionist literary movements of late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some notable works of naturalist theater include The Father by August Strindberg, Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, and A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen.  Some notable works of expressionist theater include  The Beggar by Reinhard Sorge and Parricide by Arnolt Bronnen. Finally, the Georg Büchner Prize was created in 1923 and is one of the most prestigious awards for German literature. Some of its notable winners include Heinrich Böll, whose best known works include Billard um halb zehn (Billiards at Half-past Nine) and Ansichten eines Clowns (The Clown); Günter Grass, known for his first novel, Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum); and the playwright and novelist Elfriede Jelinek, whose notable works include Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Teacher) and Die Kinder der Toten (The Children of the Dead).