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The play first appeared in 1877 in a heavily edited version by Karl Emil Franzos, [1] and was first performed at the Residence Theatre in Munich on 8 November 1913. Since then, Woyzeck has become one of the most influential and most often-performed German plays.
- Georg Büchner, Otto C. A. Zur Nedden
- 1879
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.
Woyzeck is based on a true account of a poor man who was executed for stabbing his wife, Marie, to death. Buchner became fascinated with the case, so much so that he used it as inspiration for the play that would culminate his short literary career.
Büchner based Woyzeck on an account of an actual murder case in which a soldier killed his mistress in a jealous frenzy and was subsequently the object of medical controversy regarding his sanity. Büchner did not organize the work into acts, and there is no definitive text of the play.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Oct 9, 2024 · It is uncertain how Büchner intended to order the scenes and to end the play, whether with Woyzeck's suicide (as in the opera) or with his trial (as in the historical case on which the play is based).
Jul 30, 2020 · The play’s passive hero whose progress rests in self-knowledge and increasing social awareness, as well as the play’s episodic structure that proceeds by analogies, contrasts, and juxtapositions rather than through conventional continuities, would supply the model for Woyzeck.
May 1, 2015 · The play is loosely based on the true story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a Leipzig wigmaker who murdered Christiane Woost, a widow with whom he had been living, in a fit of jealousy in 1821 and was subsequently publicly decapitated.
