Woyzeck

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Woyzeck (disambiguation) .

Data
Title:	Woyzeck
Genus:	Social drama tragedy
Original language:	German
Author:	Georg Buechner
Publishing year:	1879
Premiere:	November 8, 1913
Place of premiere:	Residenztheater Munich
Director of the premiere	Eugene Kilian
people
Franz Woyzeck Marie Christian, her child, about one year old Captain doctor Drum major Sergeant Andres Margreth Barker, crier of a booth old man Dancing child First craftsperson Second craftsperson Fool Karl The Jew grandmother First child Second child First person Second person host Kathe Bailiff barber doctor Judge Police officer Soldiers, craft boys, people, girls and children

Büchner's Woyzeck manuscript with a sketch of the doctor and the captain

1st page of the "preliminary fair copy"

Woyzeck is a fragment of the drama by the German playwright and poet Georg Büchner , who probably began writing it between around the end of July and the beginning of October 1836. When he died early in February 1837, the work was left as a fragment . The manuscript has survived in several draft stages. Woyzeck first appeared in print in 1879 in the heavily revised and edited version by Karl Emil Franzos . It was not until November 8, 1913, that Woyzeck was premiered in the Residenztheater in Munich . Since then it has been translated into numerous languages ​​and reinterpreted many times. It embodies the type of open drama , especially because of its loose sequence of episodes , even if in recent times this interpretation has tended to be deviated from and an assignment to open drama is assumed only because of the fragmentary nature of the piece. Today Woyzeck is one of the most played and influential dramas in German literature, which has inspired numerous artists to create their own works.

History of origin

Sources, historical models

The historical model for the Büchner Woyzeck is Johann Christian Woyzeck, born on January 3, 1780 in Leipzig as the son of a wig maker . Out of jealousy, he stabbed the 46-year-old widow Johanna Christiane Woost on June 21, 1821 in a hallway on Leipzig's Sandgasse. During the trial, the medical professor Johann Christian August Clarus prepared two reports on the responsibility of the accused. Woyzeck was convicted after a long process in which even the Saxon heir to the throne stood up for him with an expert opinion and was publicly executed on August 27, 1824 on the market square in Leipzig. This historical model has recently been extensively edited. Today, all judgments and reports relating to the historical Woyzeck are accessible in full text and evaluated in terms of both legal and psychiatric history.

Clarus' report with the title The Responsibility of the Murderer JC Woyzeck, documented according to the principles of state medical science , appeared in the journal Henkes Zeitschrift für die Staatsarzneikunde . Büchner's father had subscribed to the magazine and published cases from his practice as a doctor himself.

Georg Büchner probably also has information from this magazine about the tobacco spinner journeyman Daniel Schmolling, who killed his lover Henriette Lehne on September 25, 1817 in the Hasenheide near Berlin, and about the linen weaver journeyman Johann Dieß, who killed his lover Elisabeth Reuter on August 15, 1830 stabbed near Darmstadt .

A more recent source points to another model: On April 15, 1816, the journeyman cobbler Johann Philipp Schneider murdered the printer Bernhard Lebrecht in front of the Rheintor in Darmstadt because he could not pay his debts. Then he cleaned his hands and face at the Bessunger Tor in Darmstadt and washed his clothes in the Großer Woog , a lake on the edge of downtown Darmstadt. After the fact, Schneider recovered in an inn. A barber found Lebrecht's body and called the police. Schneider was convicted, sentenced and executed using the murder weapon. Parallels to Büchner's drama are obvious. This case was published as a separate print in 1816 by staff auditor Friedrich Schenk and included in an anthology of selected cases by Darmstadt court lawyer Philipp Bopp in 1834. It cannot be proven that Büchner knew the publication, but he could have met Bopp through mutual acquaintances from the circle of radical democrats in Darmstadt.

Another historical event was incorporated into the drama with the “pea pulp experiments” by the Giessen scientist Justus von Liebig . In order to find out whether the military and the proletariat could not be fed more cheaply with protein-rich legumes, soldiers only had to eat pea porridge for three months in these human experiments . The subjects soon suffered from hallucinations , lost control of their muscles including the sphincter and the urge to urinate . The neurological symptoms that Woyzeck developed while eating one-sided peas are actually the result of poisoning with an excess of non-proteinogenic amino acids . In cultivation countries such as Bangladesh or Ethiopia, such symptoms of poisoning still occur today in poor people who can only afford one-sided food.

The manuscripts

Georg Büchner began working on Woyzeck in Strasbourg in 1836 . Büchner was unable to complete the drama because of his untimely death.

Overall, the drama - not counting deletions and discarded passages - is based on 31 scenes from Büchner's hand, which can probably be assigned to four stages of development. It is not clear how Büchner wanted to arrange these scenes. The manuscript pages have no page numbers, the scenes of the piece, which is not divided into acts, are not numbered. Many scenes are very short and yet independent. The ink on the manuscript has faded so much that Büchner's brother had difficulty deciphering the work; also for this reason he did not include it in the first complete edition of 1850.

The Woyzeck fragment is handwritten in several draft versions, which are now kept in the Weimar Goethe and Schiller Archives. Gerhard Schmid published a facsimile edition of the manuscripts in 1981 (see literature ).

The manuscript is transmitted as follows:

• five sheets in office format , folded to double sheets in folio format with two groups of scenes of 21 (today referred to as design stage H1) and 9 scenes (group H2).
• a single sheet in quarto format with two individual scenes.
• six sheets in folio format, folded into six double sheets in quarto format (last draft stage H4). This “preliminary fair copy” of the drama is the most advanced draft and the basis of today's reading and stage versions.

Edition history

The fragmentary character of the piece had far-reaching consequences for its publication - as well as for the staging. The manuscripts had to be made legible again, transcribed , and the sequence of scenes for the performance on stage had to be determined. There was ample opportunity for discussion for the performers of Woyzeck as well as for the Büchner scholars.

Fourteen years after Georg Büchner's death, his brother Ludwig published the bequeathed writings in 1850 . Woyzeck was not accepted because the manuscript was very faded and largely illegible. The Austrian writer Karl Emil Franzos was able to make the manuscript readable again with chemical treatment (see Franzos' text review ). In 1879 he published the fragment in a heavily revised version in Georg Büchner: All works and handwritten bequests ( see web links ). The main character is called Wozzeck according to French interpretation . At the beginning of the piece, Franzos did not set the scene in the open field in front of the city, but the shaving scene ( see sequence of scenes : 5th scene). Decisions that continue to have an impact today: Werner Herzog's Woyzeck film, for example, begins with the shaving scene , just like the version published in the Gutenberg project . This order is u. a. also used by the Oldenbourg publishing house.

Paul Landau referred to the version published by Franzos , who in 1909 published another version in Georg Büchner's collected writings , which differed only in the arrangement of the scenes from Franzos' edition. Alban Berg used this version as the basis for his opera “ Wozzeck ”.

Fritz Bergemann published all works and letters . The incomplete critical-historical edition by Werner R. Lehmann was also the basis of the Munich edition published by Carl Hanser Verlag in 1980.

All works, letters and documents in two volumes , edited by Henri Poschmann, is the latest edition of Büchner's complete works (since 2002 as a paperback by Insel-Verlag). Together with Thomas Michael Mayer, Burghard Dedner is responsible for the study edition at Reclam ( see literature ).

2001 Georg Büchner: Woyzeck was published by KGSaur Verlag, Munich . Facsimile, transcription, emendation and reading text - book and CD-Rom edition , edited by Enrico De Angelis.

In January 2006, the current edition of Woyzeck was published as Volume 7 of the historically critical edition of Georg Büchner's Complete Works and Writings , the Marburg edition . The text volume (volume 7.1) was edited by Burghard Dedner and Gerald Funk, the explanatory volume (volume 7.2) by Burghard Dedner. The Marburg edition was completed in September 2013.

The drama

Action at a glance

The ordinary soldier Franz Woyzeck, who tries to support his girlfriend Marie and their illegitimate child financially, works as a servant for his captain. In order to secure an additional income in addition to his meager wages , which he gives completely to Marie, he has an unscrupulous doctor put him on a pea diet for experimental purposes. The captain and doctor not only exploit Woyzeck physically and mentally, but also humiliate him in public.

When Marie secretly starts an affair with a drum major and Woyzeck's growing suspicions are confirmed after watching Marie dancing with the rival in the tavern, he believes he can hear inner voices ordering him to kill the faithless Marie. Because he doesn't have enough money to buy a pistol, he gets a knife, takes Marie on an evening walk into the nearby forest and stabs her there on the bank of a lake.

characters

Woyzeck

Friedrich Johann Franz Woyzeck, called Franz, is a 30-year-old man whose main job is a military man. He has an illegitimate child with Marie. Since Woyzeck only gets a meager soldier's pay and has to pay maintenance for Marie and her child Christian, he tries to keep himself afloat with secondary jobs. He works as a personal assistant for the captain and as a test subject for the village doctor. He suffers from schizophrenia and is mentally unstable. Marie's relationship with the drum major, which she tries to hide, makes him jealous and suspicious.

Marie

Marie is Woyzeck's lover and the mother of their illegitimate child. She is described as very attractive. She gets involved in an affair with the drum major, as a result of which her initially familiar relationship with Woyzeck increasingly deteriorates. Ultimately, the disturbed relationship leads to Woyzeck murdering her at the pond one evening. Marie appears unfaithful because she gives herself to the drum major, albeit reluctantly. It can be influenced by the lure of material possessions and gifts. Despite her infidelity, however, she is not unscrupulous, as she later regrets the alleged adultery and seeks help in the Bible.

Captain

The captain belongs to the higher class of society. Woyzeck serves him as a personal assistant who shaves his beard and does small errands. The doctor describes him as bloated and with a fat throat (cf. “Street”). His aversion to moral violations, such as an illegitimate child for him, for example, as well as the great importance of the church blessing for him show that he is generally church-conservative (cf. “At the Captain”). In addition, his condescending statements towards Woyzeck and making fun of him convey a certain arrogance (see “At the Captain”). His clever way of speaking to prove his cleverness also testifies to this. Furthermore, according to his own statement, he is a melancholy or enthusiastic person (cf. “Street”) and, not least, very philosophical with his verbal reflections on eternity (cf. “At the Captain”). His most obvious characteristic, however, is his enormous aversion to rush and rush. So the race alone does not fit into his image of a good person, because in his opinion haste is based on a guilty conscience.

doctor

The doctor is part of the educated class and does not appear in the book as a private person, but only as a scientist and researcher. He is very interested in scientific phenomena. For this reason, he carries out various experiments. For example, he tests Woyzeck to see how eating peas over and over again affects the body. In this experiment, the unscrupulous nature of the doctor becomes clear, as he does not see Woyzeck as a person, but as a test subject, and does not care about the negative effects on Woyzeck. He is easily irritable and enjoys frightening other people diagnosed with the medical condition. He, too, harassed Woyzeck publicly several times, but increased his pay every time his physical and psychological condition deteriorated.

Drum major

The drum major leads the military band. He is described as a strong and confident, if not cocky man. Marie and her neighbor Margret compare it to a tree and a lion (cf. “The City”). The sight of Marie fills him with great pleasure and sexual desire, which is why he tries to make her his own (cf. “Booths. Lights. People”). In the scene "Mariens Kammer" he persuades Marie to become intimate with him. Marie initially defends herself, but at renewed insistence makes herself almost indifferent to him. The drum major attaches great importance to its external appearance. He wears his uniform as well as his white gloves and a splendid plume with conviction. (cf. “Mary's Room”). He can give Marie expensive gifts, for example gold earrings (see “Mary's Room”), since he has no family to support. In his last appearance, the drum major behaves very aggressively and wrestles Woyzeck to the ground (see "Wirtshaus"). Overall, he can be seen as an opponent to the figure of Woyzeck.

Andres

Andres likes to sing and a lot, which suggests that he is a happy and positive person. He stands by his feelings and fears. In both the scene “The Wachtstube” and “A Room in the Barracks” Woyzeck tries to convey his inner turmoil to Andres, but he does not take him and his worries seriously. He appears disinterested and does not care about Woyzeck. Andres' loyalty to Woyzeck can be seen in the scene “Kasernenhof”. He quotes the drum major's statement about Marie. Andres' trustworthiness becomes clear when Woyzeck entrusts his inheritance and identity to him in the "Kaserne" scene.

Sequence of scenes

To this day there are several reading and stage versions of Woyzeck . Werner R. Lehmann ( see literature ) constructed the following sequence of scenes on the basis of Büchner's handwriting:

• 1st scene: open field, the city in the distance

Woyzeck, who cuts willow sticks with his comrade Andres, feels threatened by supernatural powers: It's behind me, below me - hollow, do you hear? Everything hollow down there. The Freemasons ! - Andres tries to suppress his fear caused by Woyzeck's hallucinations with the folk song of the "two rabbits".

Edge drawing from Büchner's manuscript on the street scene - excerpt

• 2nd scene: The city

The military band marches past on the street. The neighbor Margreth notices that. Woyzeck visits his lover and the child. He speaks mysteriously. Marie shows no understanding.

• 3rd scene: booths, lights, people

Old man sings to the organ grinder. Marie and Woyzeck listen to a crier presenting curiosities. Sergeant and drum major rave about Marie.

• 4th scene: Mary's Chamber

Marie looks at herself in the mirror. The drum major gave her earrings. Woyzeck surprises her and gives her money. Hurry off again.

• 5th scene: With the captain

Woyzeck shaves the captain. He mocks him. When the captain starts talking about Woyzeck's morality and his illegitimate child, who was born without the blessing of the church , Woyzeck gives up his lack of words and replies: Herr Hauptmann, the good Lord will not look at the poor worm for the amen is said before it was made. With this answer he confuses the captain . He also complains about the injustice of the world: I believe that if we [poor people] got to heaven, we would have to help thunder!

• Scene 6: Mary's Chamber

The drum major makes Marie advances. She first rejects him, but then gives in.

• 7th scene: In the alley

Woyzeck has an inkling that Marie is unfaithful to him. He wants to have his suspicion of Marie's infidelity confirmed.

• 8th scene: At the doctor

Woyzeck made himself available to the doctor for experiments in order to earn money. The doctor gives him the daily ration of peas. Woyzeck talks about his visions. Woyzeck is an interesting case for the doctor .

• 9th scene: street

The captain pestered the doctor with his views. He predicts the captain will have a stroke. When Woyzeck crosses their path, they both vent their aggressions on him and hint at an affair between Marie and the drum major. Woyzeck is hit.

• 10th scene: The guard room

Woyzeck tells Andres of his inner unrest.

• 11th scene: pub

Craftsmen have fun, soldiers and young women dance. Among them also Marie and the drum major. Woyzeck sees the couple, can't believe it.

• Scene 12: Free field

Woyzeck hears voices telling him to kill Marie: "... stab the zickwolf [Marie] to death."

• Scene 13: night

During the night, Woyzeck tries to communicate with Andres and speaks of the voices that order him to kill, but Andres just wants to sleep.

• 14th scene: Tavern

Woyzeck and the drum major meet. In a duel, the physically weaker Woyzeck is defeated.

• 15th scene: General store

Woyzeck gets a knife in a Jew's shop.

• Scene 16: Chamber

Marie feels remorse and seeks comfort in the Bible.

• 17th scene: barracks

Woyzeck tells Andres who should get his belongings after his death, he does not recognize his psychological situation and assumes a simple fever that can be cured with medicine: Franz, you are coming to the hospital. Poor, you have to drink schnapps and powder in it, that'll kill the fever.

• Scene 18: The doctor's court

Students take a lecture. Woyzeck is presented and humiliated by the doctor as a test subject.

• 19th scene: Marie with the girl in front of the front door / street

Marie is sitting in front of the house with several little girls and her grandmother. The grandmother tells the fairy tale of the Sterntaler in a modified form as an anti-fairy tale with a bad ending. Woyzeck arrives and asks Marie to follow him. Marie we want to go. it's time.

• Scene 20: evening. The city in the distance

Woyzeck and Marie are in front of town. Marie unwillingly follows him and tries to escape the situation. I have to go and prepare dinner. Instead of letting her go, Woyzeck suddenly stabs Marie in a bloodlust: Take this and that! Can't you die So! so! Ha she still twitches, not yet, not yet? Still? (Thrusts.) Are you dead? Dead! Dead!

• Scene 21: People are coming

Two people hear what is happening from a distance and go to the crime scene.

• Scene 22: The inn

Woyzeck goes to an inn to rest. A woman in the inn named Käthe recognizes traces of blood on Woyzeck, whereupon the latter takes flight.

• Scene 23: evening. The city in the distance

Woyzeck looks for the knife at the crime scene near a pond in order to destroy the evidence of the murder.

• Scene 24: Woyzeck at a pond

Woyzeck sinks the knife in the pond and washes the blood off.

• Scene 25: Street

Children tell each other that a body was found outside the city.

• Scene 26: usher, doctor and judge

The body found is considered spectacular - court usher: A good murder, a real murder, a beautiful murder, as beautiful as one can ask for, we haven't had one like this for a long time.

• Scene 27: Karl (idiot), Woyzeck and the child

Karl holds Marie's child on his lap. Woyzeck promises him a biscuit (Reuter). Karl runs away with the child.

Characteristics of Büchner's style

In contrast to the language of the classic drama , the colloquial language prevails in Woyzeck : “WOYZECK: But with nature it's different, you see; with nature, that's something, how should I put it, for example ... ” - Büchner conveys authenticity through consciously built-in sentence breaks, ellipses and interjections . At the same time, this form of colloquial language serves as a means of increasing tension. The fact that people talk past each other symbolizes Woyzeck's loneliness and his broken relationship with Marie. In addition, Büchner succeeds in indicating the social rank of the speaker through different language levels. The doctor speaks a high-level language, while the language of Woyzeck and Marie, who belong to the lowest social classes, is dialect-colored and faulty.

The socially superior usually speak grammatically more correct, but often indulge in hollow phrases (e.g. the doctor: ... man is free, in man the individuality is transfigured into freedom , 8th scene) or formulate vaguely and imprecisely in Form of tautologies (e.g. the captain: He has no morality! Morality, that's when you are moral, He understands! 5th scene). Woyzeck, on the other hand, expresses himself very specifically and vividly when he takes the courage and goes out of his way. Numerous metaphors give the impression that he does not think in logical terms, but exclusively in images (e.g. everything is glowing over the city! A fire goes around the sky and a roar like trumpets , 1st scene; ... the Dear God, will not look at the poor worm whether the Amen is said about it before it was made , 5th scene; ... such a beautiful, solid, gray sky; you could feel like pounding a cock into it and hanging on it , 9th scene; When you're cold, you don't freeze anymore. You won't freeze from the morning dew , 20th scene; No, no shoes, you can go to hell without a shoe , 22nd scene). And the very vivid, poetic-looking “fairy tale” (19th scene) is told by the grandmother, who also belongs to the lower class.

The names of the roles are also meaningful: many people who come from the lower social class ( Woyzeck , his room mate Andres , Marie , the girl Käthe , Marie's neighbor Margreth and the fool Karl ) were given names by the author and appear, although only sketchily , as characters, sometimes even as identifying figures. Most of the other roles, however, are named only by their professional or social functions: "Drum Major" , "captain" , "doctor" , but also "grandmother" , "stallholders" , "Jew" among other things, their roles are often flat and one-dimensional, so they seem to be types rather than characters.

The literary references of the drama fragment are striking and often puzzling: the numerous allusions to the Bible, to Goethe's Faust (19th scene, design stage 1, Louis: What do you have a red cord around your neck ), to Shakespeare's Hamlet (1st scene: the rolling head, the hedgehog and the hollow ground under the feet refer to the cemetery and the ghost scene) and last but not least to Büchner's own works ( Danton's Death and Lenz ).

Büchner describes here the deformation of a person into an animal being, because he lacks property, social recognition and essential money. The drum major pushed him out of the only remaining environment in which he could still be human. "Cattle reason, wild animal, the monkey as a soldier, the pissing horse, an animal human" reflect all these deformations.

interpretation

Woyzeck's motifs

It is noteworthy that the drama offers various motives for murdering Woyzeck, which are weighted differently depending on the output and sequence of the scenes:

• The motive for jealousy : The most obvious motive for murder is jealousy of the drum major, since Marie enters into a relationship with him, although Woyzeck sacrifices himself for her and their child. Woyzeck is inferior to the major physically, socially and sexually (especially clearly in the scene in which the two fight) and therefore directs his aggression on Marie.
• The mental disorder : Woyzeck keeps hearing voices , a symptom of schizophrenia . His illness is caused or aggravated by the contract with the doctor. Instead of curing Woyzeck, he uses him as a guinea pig and admonishes him to stick to an extremely one-sided diet (pea diet), thus exacerbating Woyzeck's deficiency symptoms. Its symptoms indicate poisoning from the one-sided diet with pea porridge. The doctor's egotistical motive is simply the ambition to advance his pseudo-scientific experiments. The murder thus appears in part as a consequence of Woyzeck's psychological instability, which is favored by malnutrition and which is already apparent at the beginning of the drama.
• Liberation from society : Woyzeck is exploited and humiliated by society, represented by a captain, doctor and drum major. His murder of Marie is thus also a form of protest against the existing conditions, the outbreak of his pent-up aggression against the established class to which he is at the mercy.

The core of the drama

In order to grasp the crux of the Woyzeck drama , it is important to address the motive for murder. It is not enough, however, to limit oneself to Woyzeck's jealousy towards the drum major. Play a major role and the social backgrounds, especially the feudal structure of the society. This becomes clear above all with a look at the person constellation and the language of Büchner's characters.

Woyzeck is oppressed and humiliated in this society, which is reflected in his relationships with the captain, the doctor, but also the drum major: with the captain, who describes Woyzeck as "immoral" because of his poor origins and his illegitimate child with Marie; to the doctor, who sees him as an experimental subject and forces him to eat a diet that is harmful to health, but whose experiments Woyzeck cannot avoid, since he is dependent on this additional income to support his family; to the drum major, who shows no respect for Woyzeck and ridicules him both publicly and privately.

Woyzeck is not only physically but also mentally unstable. As a result, he subordinates himself to the will of other people, although their oppression triggers anger and despair in him. The relationship with Marie alone gives him stability and gives him the feeling of being a valuable person. Marie's infidelity is therefore to be seen as the cause of the murder, but not as the cause : By losing her loyalty, Woyzeck can no longer withstand the social pressure that weighs on him. The murder of Marie can be interpreted as an act of self-destruction by Woyzeck and as a liberation from society.

Woyzeck's reception

Woyzeck had considerable influence on artists, directors, painters, musicians and filmmakers around the world .

Poet, critic, playwright on "Woyzeck"

"... Georg Büchner's Woyzeck ... A tremendous thing, written more than eighty years ago ... nothing but the fate of a common soldier (around 1848) who stabs his unfaithful lover, but powerfully depicting, as if for the very least existence, for himself The uniform of an ordinary infantryman seems too wide and too emphasized, as even around the recruit Woyzeck, all the greatness of existence stands, as he can not prevent the horizons coming soon there, now there, in front of, behind, to the side of his dull soul Tearing enormous, immense, infinite, an unparalleled spectacle of how this abused person in his stable jacket stands in space, malgré lui, in the infinite reference of the stars. This is theater, this is how theater could be. "

- Rainer Maria Rilke , letter to Maria von Thurn und Taxis, July 9, 1915

“Woyzeck is the person everyone tramples on. Thus a treated, not a doer. So a top is not a whip. Thus a victim not a perpetrator. The other world becomes, so to speak, a dramatic figure - not Woyzeck. The crux of the matter becomes, so to speak, torturing humanity - not its tortured human being. In all of this it remains true that Woyzeck raises justament the most terrible objection through his powerlessness. That he attacks the deepest - because he just can't attack. "

- Alfred Kerr , theater review, December 15, 1927

“Ultimately - and that is the decisive factor - the“ Woyzeck ”, like the“ Landbote ”and the“ Danton ” before, are all about the same question: the dependence of human existence on circumstances that are 'outside of us'. Büchner had felt the “hideous fatalism of history” and its “destructive” violence in his earliest days in Giessen. The study of history, especially the major political upheavals, had asked him the question that he felt as vital question of human existence: "What is what lies within us, murders, steals?" . But that was nothing more than the question of the determining and causative factors of human fate; it was the question of freedom or predetermination of human volitional decisions, of the possibility or even only meaningfulness of being able to intervene in the course of history and the course of individual life through action and planning. "

- Hans Mayer , Theater Review, December 15, 1927

"A text that has often been tortured by the theater and happened to a twenty-three-year-old whose eyelids were cut off by the Parzen at birth, burst from the fever right down to the spelling, a structure that may arise when pouring lead when the hand with the spoon is in front trembling at the look into the future, as a sleepless angel blocks the entrance to paradise, where the playwright's innocence was at home. How harmless the pill break of the newer drama, Beckett's waiting for Godot , before this rapid thunderstorm that comes at the speed of another time, Lenz in the luggage, the extinguished lightning bolt from Livonia , Georg Heym's time in the utopian space under the ice of the Havel, Konrad Bayers in the expanded skull of Vitus Bering , Rolf Dieter Brinkmanns in right-hand traffic in front of SHAKESPEARES PUB, how shameless the lie of the POSTHISTOIRE of the barbaric reality of our prehistory. "

- Heiner Müller , Die Woyzeck, 1985

“Woyzeck has several part-time jobs, which ultimately doesn't work out because he can never, ever have the superhuman powers required for this. The jurisdiction of the stage begins where the area of ​​secular law ends. "

- Dževad Karahasan , My View of Woyzeck, 2007

Woyzeck in the theater

The director of the world premiere of Woyzeck (under this title introduced by Karl Emil Franzos ) at the Munich Residenztheater (November 8, 1913), which came about at the persistent suggestion of Hugo von Hofmannsthal , was Dr. Eugene Kilian . The sets and costumes were created by Alfred Roller . Albert Steinrück played the Woyzeck . The production brought it to 20 verifiable performances. Dernière was on August 21, 1919. By June 1915 it appeared in four productions. Albert Steinrück played Woyzeck in three of them, except in the world premiere in Munich, in Berlin at the Lessing Theater and in Vienna at the Residenzbühne (premiere on May 5, 1914).

After the First World War , the play became a much-noticed, almost fashionably sensational play text for the German-speaking theaters, with which one often addressed an audience especially interested in literature and theater and which aroused a real euphoria in the feuilletons in the pro and contra.

The actual breakthrough as a stage text brought the work its 14th production, which Max Reinhardt brought out at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin (premiere on April 5, 1921) with Eugen Klöpfer as Woyzeck.

In the close succession of Woyzeck productions during the 1920s, four scenic readings emerged as directorial concepts :

• The Woyzeck as a parable for an inexplicable, inevitable and fateful suffering inflicted on people on earth.
• Woyzeck as a social drama, as a proletarian tragedy. Woyzeck becomes a murderer and suicide through social conditions and constraints. Here the work becomes a political battle theater in the class struggle.
• The Woyzeck as a representative of those highly sensitive, intensely feeling people who are placed in an instinct-determined, unfeeling cold world. Woyzeck cannot stand the tension between his inner life and a raw environment, he falls into madness, becomes a murderer and suicide. He suffers the recurring fate of people with the “more sensitive nervous systems” ( Franz Theodor Csokor , author of Woyzeck's “attempt at perfection” , which was premiered in 1928 at the Raimund Theater in Vienna) in their struggle with the dull insensate.
• The Woyzeck as a jealous drama, as morality and staged folk ballad in the tradition of German folk poetry, the folk ballad and the folk song.

As enthusiastically as Woyzeck was acclaimed by theater journalism, the productions of the interwar period were only seldom a success with the public, and if so, then only as a success for the actors as porters of productive roles. On the other hand, there were often massive and sometimes turbulent protests in the audience.

The dense series of Woyzeck productions in the 1920s was not, as is often assumed, ended by force when the National Socialists came to power, but rather ended three years earlier with a premiere on March 21, 1930 in Erfurt . This was the 63rd production that the play was given between 1918 and 1930. It was followed by a single performance on October 15, 1932 at Studio 33 in Berlin. The play had been seen in the vast majority of cities whose theaters could afford this, according to their structure and audience environment. There it was considered played . In addition, in times of catastrophic economic crisis, theaters could no longer afford a play that, based on experience, had to be considered a public risk.

The often mentioned ban on the play by the National Socialists did not exist. Before the Second World War, it was published again in two Gau capitals , in Frankfurt am Main on the 100th anniversary of Büchner's death (1937) and in Hanover (1939).

After the Second World War, the Woyzeck reappeared on the repertoire of German theaters very soon. For example, on September 27, 1945 in an emergency theater in the White Hall of the Zoo in Leipzig under the direction of Hans Schüler with Peter Lühr as Woyzeck and on October 6, 1945 under Fred Schroer at the Kammerspiele of the New Theater in Stuttgart with Kunibert Gensichen as Woyzeck .

In the years that followed, Woyzeck became a popular template for the autonomous directorial theater. (Concise examples: The production of his own Kroetz version by Franz Xaver Kroetz in Hamburg at the Schauspielhaus in 1996 and the Michael Thalheimers in Salzburg in 2003.) All theaters that had played him up to then brought - sometimes several times - new productions. The play was also staged in smaller theater cities, at the guest state theaters, on open-air stages, and with preference on the student stages and on the stages of the multi-layered alternative scene (concise example: the homeless theater Ratten 07 in the Volksbühne, Berlin 1995). That in the course of his now 30-year existence nationwide became known regional theater Lindenhof from about 1000 inhabitants village Melchingen received in 1992 for his interpretation of the Swabian Woyzeck the Theater Prize of the Stuttgarter Zeitung . The Woyzeck , who began his stage career as a text for an elite audience, now part of the standard repertoire.

By the end of the 1999/2000 season, 420 productions can be proven.

Woyzeck in music

A milestone in dealing with Büchner's fragment was Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, which was completed in 1921 . A performance of three excerpts in 1924 brought Berg the first public success. But only Erich Kleiber , general music director of the Berlin State Opera , recognized the genius of the score and premiered Wozzeck on December 14, 1925. A more operatic version under the same title created Manfred Gurlitt . It was premiered in Bremen in 1926.

The band Subway to Sally addressed Woyzeck's murder of Marie in the song Element des Verbrechens from the album Bannkreis .

In November 2000 Robert Wilson performed the play at the Betty Nansen Theater in Copenhagen with music by Tom Waits . Blood Money is the name of the album with the songs from this production.

In 2003 the Italian neofolk band Rose Rovine e Amanti released an album entitled Woyzeck , the title track of which is based on the Büchner drama.

Woyzeck in ballet / dance theater

1996 Premiere of "Franz Woyzeck" at the Komische Oper Berlin . Full evening story ballet in 16 scenes (Act I, Act II). Choreography: Birgit Scherzer . Music: Heiner Grenzland. Libretto: Birgit Scherzer and Matthias Kaiser . Stage design: Reinhart Zimmermann . Title role: Gregor Seyffert . Conductor: Vladimir Jurowski . Ballet and Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin.

Woyzeck in the film

Georg Klaren was the first film director to bring “Woyzeck” to cinemas (title: Wozzeck ). Klaren had the idea for the film as early as 1930, but was only able to implement it in the post-war period. The framework story takes place in an anatomy room at a German university. The body of the fusilier Woyzeck, who was hanged, is laid out there. The professor regards him as a murderer, the student Büchner replies: "... whom we murdered". In the further course of the plot, he then tells his fellow students the story on which the drama is based. Kurt Meisel played Woyzeck, Paul Henckels played doctor and Helga Zülch played Marie. In other roles: Max Eckard , Karl Hellmer , Rotraut Richter and Willi Rose .

“With this work,” said Klaren in a conversation with the Berliner Zeitung on May 18, 1947, “I see my opinion about the filming of literary topics confirmed: fragments like Woyzeck or novellas are much better suited for filming than plays or novels . Fragments because they leave all room for the optical imagination, because their focus on a single punch line corresponds particularly well to the nature of the film. "

After completion, the film was considered to be artistically very noteworthy, as it represents a film work based on Expressionism . But it was withdrawn soon after the premiere because of concerns about the Marxist attitude and only came to the Federal Republic of Germany's movie theaters at the end of 1958. There it was called The Wozzeck Case.

Since Klarens Woyzeck, a number of directors have filmed the fragment. The best-known adaptation is Werner Herzog's Woyzeck from 1979, in which Klaus Kinski takes the title role. In 1983/84, Oliver Herbrich's film adaptation "Wodzeck" followed, which is located in the Ruhr area of ​​the 80s. Detlef Kügow received the Actor Award at the Moscow International Film Festival for his portrayal of the pieceworker Franz Wodzeck . In an expressive short film Woyzeck - The Film , crowned by the Federal Association of German Film Authors , the original dialogues are juxtaposed with the experimentally depicted plot in short film episodes. Directed by Minona von Vietinghoff and Max Michael Rohland in 2012. In 2013, a modern Woyzeck adaptation was published under the direction of Nuran David Calis , which relocates the plot to a contemporary Berlin neighborhood .

Woyzeck as a comic

Graphic novel "Woyzeck"

The graphic novel adaptation by the draftsman Andreas Eikenroth was published by Edition 52 in Wuppertal in 2019 .

Woyzeck in a radio play

• 1969: With Karl Renar (Woyzeck), Solveig Thomas (Marie), Hans-Dieter Zeidler (Drum Major), Franz Kutschera (The Captain), Max Noack (The Doctor), Klaus Schwarzkopf (Andres), Christa Berndl, Hans Clarin, Erwin Faber et al. v. a. Editing and direction: Heinz von Cramer . Bavarian Broadcasting 1969.
• 2006: Leonhard Koppelmann edited and staged Büchner's piece fragment in 2006 for SWR, Werner Wölbern took over the title role and Sandra Hüller can be heard as Marie.

Woyzeck interpretations

The theater group “PENG! Palast "created a completely new version of the fragment based on the Woyzeck and named it" Woyzeck machine ". The central stage and play element was a box which, as an independent machine, plays off the four character interpretations from “Woyzeck”, “Marie”, the “Drum Major” and the “Doctor” in unspecified fragments of improvisation. Play facility was the consideration that the four figures are the last four people on earth. With the piece, the group received the main prize of the Swiss Young Talent Award for Theater and Dance PREMIO, which was endowed with 22,000 francs.

In 2007 the deaf actor Werner Mössler translated the version by the Bosnian poet Dževad Karahasan into Austrian sign language .

literature

Work editions

• Georg Büchner: Works and Letters - After the historical-critical edition by Werner R. Lehmann . Hanser Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-446-12883-2 .
• Georg Büchner: Woyzeck. Facsimile edition of the manuscripts. Edited by Gerhard Schmidt. Leipzig, 1981.
• Georg Büchner: Seals. (= Georg Büchner: Complete Works. Letters and Documents. Volume 1). Edited by Henri Poschmann among colleagues. v. Rosemarie Poschmann. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-618-60090-9 , pp. 145-219.
• Georg Büchner: Woyzeck. Study edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-15-018007-4 .
• Georg Büchner: Woyzeck. Leonce and Lena. Reclam (No. 18420), Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-018420-7 .
• Georg Büchner: Woyzeck. Leonce and Lena. In: Hamburg reading books. No. 148, Husum / Nordsee, ISBN 978-3-87291-147-6 .
• Georg Büchner: All works and writings. (Marburg edition), Volume 7: Woyzeck. Volume 1: Text. ed. by Burghard Dedner and Gerald Funk with colleagues. by Per Röcken, Volume 2: Text, edition report, documents and explanations. ed. by Burghard Dedner with collabor. by Arnd Beise, Ingrid Rehme, Eva-Maria Vering and Manfred Wenzel. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-15603-X .

Secondary literature

• Norbert Kinne: Reading aids Woyzeck. 8 high school graduation questions with solutions. (= Klett reading aids). 4th edition. Ernst Klett Verlag , Stuttgart et al. 2005, ISBN 3-12-923005-X .
• Norbert Tholen: Georg Büchner. Danton's death, Woyzeck. Krapp & Gutknecht , Rot ad Rot 2010, ISBN 978-3-941206-24-3 .
• Rüdiger Bernhardt: Georg Büchner: Woyzeck. (= King's explanations: text analysis and interpretation. Volume 315). C. Bange Verlag , Hollfeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-8044-1916-2 .
• Christian Neuhuber : Georg Büchner. The literary work . Berlin 2009.

Web links

Wikiquote: Wozzeck  - Quotes

Wikisource: Wozzeck  - sources and full texts

Wikisource: The Sanity of the Murderer Johann Christian Woyzeck  - Sources and full texts

• Woyzeck at Zeno.org .
• Woyzeck in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Woyzeck in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available for users from Germany )
• Woyzeck as a public domain audio book in Project Gutenberg
• Audiobook at LibriVox (different sequence of scenes)
• Figure lexicon on Woyzeck by David Thies in the portal Literaturlexikon online
• Review of Michael Thalheimer's Woyzeck production (DIE ZEIT)
• The Woyzeck case
• Pea madness - In the pea madness
• Duru, Boris, Büchners Woyzeck - a description of the perpetrator and the circumstances accompanying the crime, in: ZJS 2012, p. 739 ff. [1]

Individual evidence

1. ^ Holger Steinberg, Adrian Schmidt-Recla, Sebastian Schmideler: Forensic Psychiatry in Nineteenth-Century Saxony. The Case of Woyzeck .. In: Harvard Review of Psychiatry. 15, 2007, pp. 169-180; Adrian Schmidt-Recla: That such a condition excludes any attribution is in itself clear ... A contribution to the theory of monomania and a source reading for Georg Büchner's fragment “Woyzeck”. in Michael Kilian (Ed.): Jenseits von Bologna - Jurisprudentia literarisch, Berlin 2006, pp. 305–357; Holger Steinberg, Sebastian Schmideler: The death sentences of the Leipzig Schöppenstuhl in the Woyzeck case: two important forensic psychiatric sources presented for the first time. in progress in neurology · Psychiatrie 74 (2006), pp. 575-581; Holger Steinberg, Sebastian Schmideler: Rediscovered after 180 years: The opinion of the Medical Faculty of the University of Leipzig on the Woyzeck case. In: The neurologist. 76, 2005, pp. 626-632.
2. ^ Burghard Dedner, Eva-Maria Vering: It happened in Darmstadt. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. December 23, 2005, No. 299, p. 35.
3. ↑ Udo Pollmer : In the pea madness. A questionable nutrition experiment in the 19th century. (with further evidence) In: Deutschlandradio Kultur . October 26, 2013, accessed October 29, 2013.
4. ^ Georg Büchner: Woyzeck in the Gutenberg-DE project
5. ↑ Enrico De Angelis (ed.): Georg Büchner: Woyzeck. Facsimile, transcription, emendation and reading text - book and CD-Rom edition. KGSaur Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-598-11457-5 .
6. ↑ In this context, reference should also be made to the image and metaphor chains described by Volker Klotz in 1969 , which run through all the scenes ( hot - cold - sun , knife - stab , eye - window and animal metaphors and motifs).
7. ↑ Bernhardt, Rüdiger: King's Explanations Georg Büchner Woyzeck, Bange Verlag, Hollfeld, 2011, p. 53; P. 86
8. ↑ Boris Duru: Büchners Woyzeck - a description of the perpetrator and the circumstances accompanying the crime . In: ZJS 2012 . S. 739 ff .
9. ↑ Hans Mayer: Georg Büchner and his time. 9th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​1972, ISBN 3-518-36558-4 .
10. ↑ Heiner Müller: The wound Woyzeck. 1985.
11. ↑ Dževad Karahasan: My view of Woyzeck. ARBOS - Society for Music and Theater , 2007.
12. ↑ cf. Chronicle of the Lindenhof Theater from 1992.
13. ^ Heinz Wagner, The great manual of the opera. 2nd (license) edition. Verlag Florian Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg 1995, p. 276.
14. ↑ The Othello of Leipzig. Movie review. In: Der Spiegel. No. 52, 1958, p. 62.
15. ↑ "Wodzeck" , information on the film (accessed on 22 March 2019) on filmportal.de.
16. ↑ Woyzeck in the Internet Movie Database (English)
17. ↑ arte.tv: Woyzeck. ( Memento of the original from October 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 14, 2013. 
18. ↑ PREMIO: 8th young talent award for theater and dance PENG! Palace: courage to win. Federation of Migros Cooperatives, Department of Culture and Social Affairs, May 26, 2009, accessed on April 10, 2015 .