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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
Woyzeck, dramatic fragment by Georg Büchner, written between 1835 and 1837; it was discovered and published posthumously in 1879 as Wozzek and first performed in 1913. Best known as the libretto for Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck (performed 1925), the work was published in a revised version in 1922.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 30, 2020 · Woyzeck is one of the first plays in Europe about ordinary people. It radically alters the established Aristotelian dramatic formula by presenting “a poor good-for-nothing” as its tragic hero.
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.
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.
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.
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.
