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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
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
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.
Mar 3, 2011 · This true story is now loosely based on the famous play Woyzeck by George Buchner, written in 1836, but not performed until 1914. It is interesting to consider why Buchner may have used this particular case to influence his writing.
In 1879, the novelist Karl Emil Franzos undertook the publication of Büchner’s collected works, deciphering and ordering his episodic Woyzeck manuscript sketches into a cohesive narrative (but misspelling the title character’s name as “Wozzeck” in the process). The play was not mounted on stage for a further 34 years.
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).
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.
