Theatre
Woyzeck
Georg Büchner · 1875
Opening lines
Marktschreier
Meine Herren! Meine Herren! Sehn Sie die Creatur, wie sie Gott gemacht, nix, gar nix.
Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Behold the creature as God made it, nothing, nothing at all.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from zeno.org
Synopsis
The soldier Franz Woyzeck, who lives with Marie and the child she bore him out of wedlock, supplements his pay by shaving his captain and by lending himself to the experiments of a doctor, who feeds him on peas in order to observe him. His reason begins to fail: he hears voices and sees signs of the end of the world, while Marie lets herself be seduced by a drum major. Eaten up with jealousy, Woyzeck confronts his rival, who beats and humiliates him.
Context
The play was written between July and October 1836; its author died in February 1837 without having finished it: thirty-one scenes survive, in four drafts, and their order remains a matter of editing. The manuscript, almost faded, was made legible by Karl Emil Franzos, who gave a reworked text of it in periodicals in 1875 and 1877, then in the complete works of 1879, under the erroneous name Wozzeck; the true name was only restored in the early 1920s by Georg Witkowski. The material comes from a Leipzig trial, that of a former wig-maker turned soldier, tried from 1821 to 1824, in which his criminal responsibility was debated.
Who it is for
About thirty short scenes, whose order changes from one edition to another; the Théâtrales edition also gives the four manuscripts and the source.
Prizes and reception
One of the most frequently performed and most influential German dramas, first staged only in Munich in 1913, and turned into Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck.
Sources for this page 2
The pages consulted to check this page.