Danton’s Tod; Danton's Death

Danton’s Tod; Danton’s Death (1835; first publ. 1835; first performed in 1902 in Berlin)

Danton’s Tod; Danton’s Death is a dramatisation of the events leading to the guillotining of Georges Jacques Danton on 4 April 1794. The manuscript title is Danton’s Tod, although many later editions modernize the spelling by omitting the apostrophe.

Büchner already knew the history of the French Revolution well from a progressive publication called Unsere Zeit (Our Time), which his father used to read aloud (see Maurice B. Benn, reading list below, p. 104). Approximately one sixth of the play is lifted directly from historical sources (see reading list below). The play contains several crowd scenes which explore Büchner's idea that the individual is only 'foam on the wave' (in Act 2, Scene 5; and in his letter to Minna Jaeglé, 9-12 March 1834; see Büchner main page).

In Act One, Danton seems more concerned with his wife Julie and his mistress Marion than with politics. Robespierre gives a menacing speech at the Jacobins’ Club. The next day Danton confornts Robespierre and mocks his virtue.

In Act Two, Danton’s friends urge him to flee but Danton is convinced that his opponents won’t dare to execute him. Camille visits his wife Lucile. In Act Two, Scene 5, Danton visits Julie, and makes speech to her which draws on the famous ‘Fatalismus-Brief’; ‘Fatalism Letter’ which Büchner wrote to his fiancée Minna Jaeglé (circa. 9-12 March 1834). Robespierre makes a speech calling for Danton to be executed.

In Act Three, political prisoners including Thomas Payne discuss atheism. Danton and Camille are led into prison. Danton is interrogated by the Revolutionary Tribunal. St. Just insists that Danton must be forbidden to speak any longer in his defence. The Revolutionary Tribunal meets again. Danton is defiant and prophecies dictatorship. He is taken away.

In Act Four, Lucile stands outside the prison and calls to Camille. Julie commits suicide. Danton, Camille and their friends are guillotined. Lucile sits on the steps of the guillotine, mourning Camille. She defies the revolutionary guards, and they take her away.

Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Büchner’s Danton is doomed by his hesitation. But while Hamlet is haunted by his father’s ghost and the horror of his own family drama, Danton sees himself as part of a greater human family, and he is tormented by his insights into human nature, including himself and his role in the September Massacres of 1792, in which over a thousand people were murdered. As Danton says in Act 2, Scene 1:

Es wurde ein Fehler gemacht, wie wir geschaffen wurden; es fehlt uns etwas, ich habe keinen Namen dafür […] Geht, wir sind elende Alchymisten!

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/buechner/danton/chap003.html

A mistake was made when we were created; we are lacking something, I don’t have a name for it […] Get away, we are miserable alchemists!

In other words: given the way that human beings are, the idealistic attempt to turn then into ‘gold’ is ridiculous.

Danton sees that Robespierre’s virtue enables him to feel superior to other people and compares Robespierre’s virtue to thick shoe heels, implying that virtue is a physical prop, an accessory which Robespierre uses to look down on others. As Danton tells Robespierre in Act 1, Scene 6:

Robespierre: Du leugnest die Tugend?

Danton: Und das Laster. Es gibt nur Epikureer, und zwar grobe und feine, Christus war der feinste; das ist der einzige Unterschied, den ich zwischen den Menschen herausbringen kann. Jeder handelt seiner Natur gemäß, d. h. er tut, was ihm wohltut. – Nicht wahr, Unbestechlicher, es ist grausam, dir die Absätze so von den Schuhen zu treten?

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/buechner/danton/chap002.html

Robespierre: You deny virtue?

Danton: And vice. There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined, Christ was the most refined of all; that’s the only difference I can discern among human beings. Everyone acts according to his nature, that means he does what is good for him.

[- translation by Henry J. Schmidt, in Georg Büchner, The Major Works, ed. by Matthew Wilson Smith (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), p. 40.]

In contrast, Danton’s shoes seem to have very thin soles; in other words he is painfully conscious of the dirt and grime of being human. In Act 2, Scene 1 he refers to the soil of the fatherland beneath his feet, and in Act 2, Scene 4 he feels as if the soles of his shoes are burning.

The sense of human inadequacy and idiocy is also expressed by Camille in Act 4, Scene 5:

wir sollten einmal die Masken abnehmen, wir sähen dann, wie in einem Zimmer mit Spiegeln, überall nur den einen uralten, zahllosen, unverwüstlichen Schafskopf, nichts mehr, nichts weniger. Die Unterschiede sind so groß nicht, wir alle sind Schurken und Engel, Dummköpfe und Genies, und zwar das alles in einem

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/buechner/danton/chap005.html

for once we should take off the masks, and then we would see, everywhere, like in a mirrored room, just that age-old, countless, everlasting sheep’s head, nothing more, nothing less. The differences are not so great, we are all scoundrels and angels, idiots and geniuses, and all at once

As Reinhold Grimm has pointed out (see below, pp. 139-75), Dantons Tod can be seen as a ‘counter conception’ to Goethe's Egmont.

Other major dramas about the French Revolution include Grabbe, Napoleon oder die 100 Tage; Napoleon or the 100 Days (1829-30); Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie Roland (1867); Stanisława Przybyszewska, The Danton Case (1929); Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade (1964) and Heiner Müller, Der Auftrag; The Task/The Mission (1978).