Büchner

Georg Büchner (1813-1837)

Büchner is the most important dramatist of the mid-19th century, and considered by many to be one of the greatest German dramatists along with Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Brecht and Heiner Müller. Büchner died of typhoid aged 23 in 1837, and only gained his reputation around 1900, when Naturalists, Expressionists, Wedekind and (later) Brecht recognised him as a precursor. Today, Germany’s most prestigious literary prize, the Büchner-Preis, is named after him.

Before he died, Büchner produced three great plays and one great short story. Dantons Tod; Danton’s Death is an intense historical drama; Leonce und Lena; Leonce and Lena is philosophical comedy which contains profound reflections on determinism and scientific progress; Woyzeck is a gripping, fragmentary masterpiece. The short story Lenz, based on the life of Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, is a humane and insightful study of mental illness.

The radical scepticism of Büchner’s drama owes much to his scientific research as a biologist (he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the nervous system of carp). His sceptical, contradictory aesthetic contrasts with the positivism and idealism which dominated 19th century German culture, but it clearly anticipates 20th century literary modernism.

Büchner’s works can be seen in part as a riposte to the idealism of Schiller and Kant. Schiller and Kant regard human beings as essentially free, rational and beings, capable of sublime apprehensions. Büchner rejects such abstract and aristocratic notions as (at best) unrealistic, and (at worst) arrogant. In Büchner’s work the hungering, lusting body is continually reasserting its elemental power over the mind, and making a mockery of pretensions to virtue. In his short story Lenz we read:

‘Dieser Idealismus ist die schmählichste Verachtung der menschlichen Natur’.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/buechner/lenz/lenz.html

‘This idealism is the most shameful scorn of human nature.’

Büchner inserted a brilliant critique of idealist drama at the beginning of Act 2, Scene 3 of Dantons Tod; Danton’s Death, where Camille talks about the hollow creatures of idealist drama, which mislead people and cause them to ignore (or sneer at) their fellow human beings.

Büchner’s study of the French Revolution led him to make some famous remarks in a letter to his fiancée Minna Jaeglé written between 9-12 March 1834:

Ich finde in der Menschennatur eine entsetzliche Gleichheit, in den menschlichen Verhältnissen eine unabwendbare Gewalt, Allen und Keinem verliehen. Der Einzelne nur Schaum auf der Welle, die Größe ein bloßer Zufall, die Herrschaft des Genies ein Puppenspiel, ein lächerliches Ringen gegen ein ehernes Gesetz, es zu erkennen das Höchste, es zu beherrschen unmöglich. […] Das muß ist eins von den Verdammungsworten, womit der Mensch getauft worden. Der Ausspruch: es muß ja Ärgernis kommen, aber wehe dem, durch den es kommt, – ist schauderhaft. Was ist das, was in uns lügt, mordet, stiehlt? Ich mag dem Gedanken nicht weiter nachgehen.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/buechner/briefe1/chap004.html

I find in human nature a terrible uniformity, in human relations an inescapable violence, given to everyone and no one. The individual is only foam on the wave, greatness is mere chance, the mastery of genius a puppet-play, a ridiculous struggle against an iron law; to recognise this law is the highest insight; to master this law is impossible. […] ‘Must’ is one of the words of damnation with which man has been baptised. The saying ‘Offence must come, but woe to that man by whom the offence comes’ – is terrible. What is it that lies, murders and steals in us? I would rather not think this through. [Translation ES].

This letter is known as the ‘Fatalismus-Brief’; ‘Fatalism Letter’. The phrase ‘es muß ja Ärgernis kommen […]’; ‘Offence must come […]’ is a quotation from Luke 17:1 and Matthew 18:7; the phrase also occurs in Act 5, Scene 10 of J.M.R. Lenz’s play Der Hofmeister; The Tutor (1774). Büchner reworked it and used it in Act 2, Scene 5 of Dantons Tod; Danton’s Death. However, John Reddick argues that this letter is a red herring, the expression of a transient mood rather than the statement of a definitive philosophy. He points out that the main characters in Dantons Tod; Danton’s Death act deliberately and exercise different kinds of limited freedom (see reading list below, Reddick, p. 109).

The pessimistic view which Büchner expressed in this famous letter did not stop him being politically engaged. In the same month that he wrote the letter to Minna Jaeglé, March 1834, he joined the ‘Gesellschaft der Menschenrechte’ (‘The Society for Human Rights’) in Giessen and began working on his political pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote; The Hessian Courier (1834), which he wrote together with Friedrich Ludwig Weidig.

Dramas:

Dantons Tod; Danton’s Death (written and published 1835)

Leonce und Lena; Leonce and Lena (written 1836)

Woyzeck (written 1836-37)

Story:

Lenz (written 1835; published 1839)

Political Pamphlet:

Der Hessische Landbote; The Hessian Courier (1834)

Translations from French into German:

Victor Hugo, Lucretia Borgia (1835)

Victor Hugo, Maria Tudor (1835)

Scientific Research:

Mémoire sur le système nerveux du barbeau; Dissertation on the Nervous System of the Barbel (1836)

Probevorlesung über Schädelnerven; Trial Lecture on Cranial Nerves (1836)

Standard Edition in English

Georg Büchner: The Major Works, ed. by Matthew Wilson Smith (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012)