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Complete Works and Letters (German Library)
English, German (translation)
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1837
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652 people want to read
About the author
Georg Büchner
252 books171 followersKarl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Georg Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany. It is widely believed that, but for his early death, he might have attained the significance of such central German literary figures as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
May 23, 2015
Preface
Introduction
Chronology
Plays
--Danton's Death
--Leonce and Lena
--Woyzeck
Fiction
--Lenz
Non-Fiction
--The Hessian Messenger
--On Cranial Nerves
--Selected Letters
Notes and Background to Texts
Select Bibliography
Introduction
Chronology
Plays
--Danton's Death
--Leonce and Lena
--Woyzeck
Fiction
--Lenz
Non-Fiction
--The Hessian Messenger
--On Cranial Nerves
--Selected Letters
Notes and Background to Texts
Select Bibliography
April 28, 2021
When I read this book, it was over about two days, right as I was in the middle of an existential and spiritual crisis. I don't know if I can recommend reading Büchner in an existential and spiritual crisis, but I do know that there are circumstances when reading him can feel like being struck by a thunderbolt.
Many romantics, perhaps especially German romantics, wrote with the intention of reproducing the effect of certain folk songs - namely, the strange feeling of something occurring on the tip of your mind, filling your head with lonely stories derived from bad dreams. A woman clips rosemary, puts the sprigs in a bowl, and sees the bowl fill up with blood - it's a premonition, of course. She knows exactly what it means, but there's no way she can act on the warning: the thing's already happened, it's already a song, it's already in the past. That's the sort of feeling they aimed at. To my mind, nobody quite succeeded at capturing that grim power like Büchner. The fragments of "Lenz" and "Woyzeck" are consequently among the most harrowing and haunting pieces of literature I've ever read, all the more powerful because they were never completed (he died obscenely young). They still feel on the tip of the mind - specifically, the mind as it sometimes operates at about 4 am, when it suddenly and inexplicably worries about the point of life and the problem of evil.
Many romantics, perhaps especially German romantics, wrote with the intention of reproducing the effect of certain folk songs - namely, the strange feeling of something occurring on the tip of your mind, filling your head with lonely stories derived from bad dreams. A woman clips rosemary, puts the sprigs in a bowl, and sees the bowl fill up with blood - it's a premonition, of course. She knows exactly what it means, but there's no way she can act on the warning: the thing's already happened, it's already a song, it's already in the past. That's the sort of feeling they aimed at. To my mind, nobody quite succeeded at capturing that grim power like Büchner. The fragments of "Lenz" and "Woyzeck" are consequently among the most harrowing and haunting pieces of literature I've ever read, all the more powerful because they were never completed (he died obscenely young). They still feel on the tip of the mind - specifically, the mind as it sometimes operates at about 4 am, when it suddenly and inexplicably worries about the point of life and the problem of evil.
January 2, 2019
‘LENZ
On 20th January Lenz crossed the mountains. Snow on the peaks and upper slopes, down into the valleys grey stone, green patches, rocks and pine-trees. It was cold and wet, the water trickled down the rocks and leapt across the path...
He felt no tiredness, just occasional regret that he couldn’t walk on his head. A surge swept through his breast at first when the rock seemed to leap away, the grey wood shuddered beneath him, and the mist devoured the shape of things then half revealed their giant limbs; the surge swept through him, he sought for something, as though for lost dreams, but he found nothing. Everything was so small to him, so near, so wet, he would have liked to tuck the earth behind the stove, he couldn’t understand that he needed so much time to clamber down a slope, to reach a distant point; he thought he should be able to measure out everything with a few strides....
Towards evening he reached the crest of the mountains, the snowfields that led down again to the westward plain, he sat a while at the top. It had turned calmer towards evening; the clouds lay solid and motionless in the sky, nothing so far as the eye could see but mountain peaks from which broad slopes descended, and everything so quiet, grey, increasingly faint; he felt a terrible loneliness, he was all alone, completely alone, he wanted to talk to himself, but he couldn’t, he scarcely dared breathe, his footfall rang like thunder beneath him, he had to sit down; a nameless fear took hold of him in this nothing, he was in empty space, he leapt to his feet and flew down the slope. Darkness had fallen, heaven and earth had melted into one.“
‘You need to love mankind to be able to reach the essential being of each individual, you must consider no one too lowly, no one too ugly, only then can you understand them; the most ordinary of faces makes a deeper impression than any contrived sensation of beauty, and you can let the characters’ own being emerge quite naturally without bringing in anything copied from outside where no life, no pulse, no muscles surge and throb. Kaufmann objected that he would find no models in reality for the Apollo Belvedere19 or Raphael’s Madonnas.20 What does that matter, Lenz retorted, I have to confess that things like that leave me utterly cold. If I work at it within myself, I can doubtless generate feeling of some kind, but it takes a real effort. The writers and artists I like above all are those that most strongly convey the reality of nature, with the result that their work engages my feelings. Everything else troubles me. I prefer the Dutch painters to the Italians, they are the only ones, too, that you can truly grasp;’
On 20th January Lenz crossed the mountains. Snow on the peaks and upper slopes, down into the valleys grey stone, green patches, rocks and pine-trees. It was cold and wet, the water trickled down the rocks and leapt across the path...
He felt no tiredness, just occasional regret that he couldn’t walk on his head. A surge swept through his breast at first when the rock seemed to leap away, the grey wood shuddered beneath him, and the mist devoured the shape of things then half revealed their giant limbs; the surge swept through him, he sought for something, as though for lost dreams, but he found nothing. Everything was so small to him, so near, so wet, he would have liked to tuck the earth behind the stove, he couldn’t understand that he needed so much time to clamber down a slope, to reach a distant point; he thought he should be able to measure out everything with a few strides....
Towards evening he reached the crest of the mountains, the snowfields that led down again to the westward plain, he sat a while at the top. It had turned calmer towards evening; the clouds lay solid and motionless in the sky, nothing so far as the eye could see but mountain peaks from which broad slopes descended, and everything so quiet, grey, increasingly faint; he felt a terrible loneliness, he was all alone, completely alone, he wanted to talk to himself, but he couldn’t, he scarcely dared breathe, his footfall rang like thunder beneath him, he had to sit down; a nameless fear took hold of him in this nothing, he was in empty space, he leapt to his feet and flew down the slope. Darkness had fallen, heaven and earth had melted into one.“
‘You need to love mankind to be able to reach the essential being of each individual, you must consider no one too lowly, no one too ugly, only then can you understand them; the most ordinary of faces makes a deeper impression than any contrived sensation of beauty, and you can let the characters’ own being emerge quite naturally without bringing in anything copied from outside where no life, no pulse, no muscles surge and throb. Kaufmann objected that he would find no models in reality for the Apollo Belvedere19 or Raphael’s Madonnas.20 What does that matter, Lenz retorted, I have to confess that things like that leave me utterly cold. If I work at it within myself, I can doubtless generate feeling of some kind, but it takes a real effort. The writers and artists I like above all are those that most strongly convey the reality of nature, with the result that their work engages my feelings. Everything else troubles me. I prefer the Dutch painters to the Italians, they are the only ones, too, that you can truly grasp;’
January 10, 2020
Three dramas, one uncompleted short story/novella, and one pamphlet. Buchner was a dramatist far ahead of his time (early 19th century Germany) and died tragically young at 23. The introduction was good, and contained some excerpts from his correspondence. And now, the works individually:
The Dramas:
Danton's Death - about the French Revolution. Very interesting. Five stars.
Leonice and Lena - the dud in the bunch, based upon commedia del'arte. Two Stars.
Woyzeck (not completed) - a very disturbing tragedy about a soldier how murders his woman. Five stars.
The Rest:
Lenz-a story about a restless poet who wanders in the mountains. Three stars.
The Hessian Courier - a pamphlet fomenting revolution against the Hessian government. Reminds me of the Rights of Man. Three starts.
The Dramas:
Danton's Death - about the French Revolution. Very interesting. Five stars.
Leonice and Lena - the dud in the bunch, based upon commedia del'arte. Two Stars.
Woyzeck (not completed) - a very disturbing tragedy about a soldier how murders his woman. Five stars.
The Rest:
Lenz-a story about a restless poet who wanders in the mountains. Three stars.
The Hessian Courier - a pamphlet fomenting revolution against the Hessian government. Reminds me of the Rights of Man. Three starts.
October 18, 2007
'one coarse hide rubs against another' and other astonishingly modern cynical desperate gems from the 1830s
July 2, 2013
Wozzeck is definitely the best of these three plays, but the other two are worth reading if you liked that.
One of my favourite things about Büchner is that no matter the social standing of a character he always puts extremely eloquent poetic musings on life and death in their mouths. You are quite quickly forced to give up any question of whether this is realistic or not, and are given the chance of hearing what these characters would say had they the means to express it.
It does also mean that it makes for pretty heavy reading, and this along with the fact it is a 50's translation of early 19th century text was at times enough to leave me feeling a bit lost.
I really enjoyed Geoffrey Dunlop's introduction, I so much prefer translators introductions to critics any day. Büchner's story is fascinating and the historical background that Dunlop gives is lovingly handled if at times a bit overly wordy.
The Breadth Büchner covers with these three plays is impressive, Leonce & Lena is a comedy in an almost Shakespearean vein, Danton's death is political in that it reflects Büchner's cynical outlook on the politics of his time and the french revolution but at heart is more of a social commentary, and then Wozzeck portraits the stifling hardship of the working classes. But all through these he manages to perfectly fit in his poetic musings on life and death. Throughout all of these stories there is a very definite sympathy with working classes.
The thing that is really going to get you with Büchner is the sheer quality of prose: his stories seem at times a little fragmented but the phrases, reflections and analogies are often astounding. It seems to me in one way a huge loss that Büchner wrote all of his plays in such a rush and under such stressful circumstances: Leonce & Lena could perhaps be made clearer in order to become the light comedy it should be; Danton's death could be a much more cohesive well rounded story, but perhaps they would not have had nearly the energy had they been crafted over a longer duration.
Tempted to give this 5 hmmmmmmmm.........
May 19, 2010
I started this collection of Büchner's work for his play Woyzeck, and read everything except Danton's Death (which I'm saving for later). Considering that Büchner died when he was 23, this collection of three plays, a novella, a revolutionary political treatise, a scientific lecture, and a bunch of letters is rather impressive. What is even more impressive is how modern Büchner seems considering that he was writing 180 years ago. This collection has crisp translations and interesting introductory material.
August 30, 2015
a good translation
January 11, 2023
I've continuously read Georg Büchner since I learned German about 10 years ago and he never ceases to impress me. In his short 23 years, he managed to cover so much ground and write with such force. It truly boggles the mind!
Büchner viciously critiques both wooden idealisms and mechanical materialisms in Leonce and Leone and at pivotal points throughout his other work. He's clearly tortured over these options, both of which resemble a puppet show in his eyes, and begins to think through what a sublation of the "material/ideal" binary would look like. (Interestingly, his brother Ludwig would write one of the central works of German materialism not long later Kraft und Stoff. Empirisch-naturphilosophische Studien.) After his disappointment that his plebian propaganda tract The Hessian Messenger, unfortunately toned down by his comrade Weidig, did not incite the rural peasantry to revolt against the rich, Büchner was at pains to imagine what the revolutionary should do in times of reaction. His Danton's Tod, written while on the run from the authorities for his manifesto, becomes a vehicle for thinking through this question and, in this way, manages to anticipate what felt like a specifically 20th century left-wing melancholia, and already outline possible lines of escape. Finally, his two masterpieces. Woyzeck is cruel, dark, mean, and brutal and probably the greatest proletarian drama of the time in Europe while Lenz arrives on the scene like a lightning bolt as a depiction of madness, far surpassing anyone else writing and holding the title as the greatest literary tale of madness written in German for half a century.
Büchner viciously critiques both wooden idealisms and mechanical materialisms in Leonce and Leone and at pivotal points throughout his other work. He's clearly tortured over these options, both of which resemble a puppet show in his eyes, and begins to think through what a sublation of the "material/ideal" binary would look like. (Interestingly, his brother Ludwig would write one of the central works of German materialism not long later Kraft und Stoff. Empirisch-naturphilosophische Studien.) After his disappointment that his plebian propaganda tract The Hessian Messenger, unfortunately toned down by his comrade Weidig, did not incite the rural peasantry to revolt against the rich, Büchner was at pains to imagine what the revolutionary should do in times of reaction. His Danton's Tod, written while on the run from the authorities for his manifesto, becomes a vehicle for thinking through this question and, in this way, manages to anticipate what felt like a specifically 20th century left-wing melancholia, and already outline possible lines of escape. Finally, his two masterpieces. Woyzeck is cruel, dark, mean, and brutal and probably the greatest proletarian drama of the time in Europe while Lenz arrives on the scene like a lightning bolt as a depiction of madness, far surpassing anyone else writing and holding the title as the greatest literary tale of madness written in German for half a century.
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October 18, 2018The last, and shortest in the collection, "The Hessian Courier" was an angry little gem. Written in the 1830s, it shows that nothing much ever really changes.
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October 28, 2019jämejalas (#64), to-read (#168)
April 5, 2020
Enjoyed reading all of this author, as a fan of the opera Wozzeck.
January 1, 2025
Didn’t expect to enjoy this as much as I did but his plays were phenomenal!
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September 2, 2025Translated by John Reddick
August 9, 2022
Buchner is considered one of the greatest German playwrights with enough talent to join the ranks of Goethe and Schiller if it was not for his premature death. His surviving work is scraped together from what few extant manuscripts exist, raising questions about the completeness of his published writing. I imagine reading his work contemporaneously would have been much more novel than today. He was ahead of his time in prose, expressionism, and naturalism, which imbues an appreciation for his work. I especially enjoyed "Woyzeck" as it reminded me of "Crime and Punishment" and the historical enlivenment of "Danton's Death".
November 6, 2016
Woyzeck ***** – What a lyrically haunting play. It is little more than fragments of story, song and poetry with an unresolved – or unclear – ending.
When I say “fragments”, I mean that each scene is brief, but almost complete in itself. The story/plot itself is not necessarily fragmented. The arc of it is rather clear and unremarkable (at least by today’s standards). A woman cheats on a troubled man, who kills her when he finds out. But it is told in short, poignant scenes – some no more than a single line of dialogue.
Like Danton’s Death, the language reveals Buchner’s admiration for Shakespeare. It is lyrical, imaginative, heightened, and unnatural. The characters are reflective and philosophical. Folk songs abound. Along with the short, tightly focused scenes, this dialogue creates a sense that each scene is more like a song, lending it an operatic feel.
Yet the play is frustratingly incomplete. That’s either its greatest flaw or greatest strength. In this translation by Richard Mueller, Woyzeck is captured alive. The translator believes Buchner would have had a trial scene if he had lived. (No drafts exist that I’m aware of.) The translation by Victor Price, on the other hand, has Woyzeck drown himself when he goes back in the lake to throw away the knife. To him, the play is nearly complete. (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
That’s quite a variation in interpretation. I don’t think Buchner would have added a trial scene. Or, if there were a trial, it would have been offstage. I don’t see how you could stage something like a trial and maintain the same tone and style. Additionally, it would have been too pat of an ending. There’s a sense of shame and degradation throughout the play that seems to argue against a final reckoning or resolution.
But who knows. Buchner claimed the play was almost done before he became ill and died. At this point we can only presume what he meant and what he ultimately wanted. (We can, however, make it mean what we want.) Yet there is a greatness in this play, a haunting sense of evil, disintegration and humiliation. It’s unlike any play I’ve read. I strongly recommend it.
When I say “fragments”, I mean that each scene is brief, but almost complete in itself. The story/plot itself is not necessarily fragmented. The arc of it is rather clear and unremarkable (at least by today’s standards). A woman cheats on a troubled man, who kills her when he finds out. But it is told in short, poignant scenes – some no more than a single line of dialogue.
Like Danton’s Death, the language reveals Buchner’s admiration for Shakespeare. It is lyrical, imaginative, heightened, and unnatural. The characters are reflective and philosophical. Folk songs abound. Along with the short, tightly focused scenes, this dialogue creates a sense that each scene is more like a song, lending it an operatic feel.
Yet the play is frustratingly incomplete. That’s either its greatest flaw or greatest strength. In this translation by Richard Mueller, Woyzeck is captured alive. The translator believes Buchner would have had a trial scene if he had lived. (No drafts exist that I’m aware of.) The translation by Victor Price, on the other hand, has Woyzeck drown himself when he goes back in the lake to throw away the knife. To him, the play is nearly complete. (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
That’s quite a variation in interpretation. I don’t think Buchner would have added a trial scene. Or, if there were a trial, it would have been offstage. I don’t see how you could stage something like a trial and maintain the same tone and style. Additionally, it would have been too pat of an ending. There’s a sense of shame and degradation throughout the play that seems to argue against a final reckoning or resolution.
But who knows. Buchner claimed the play was almost done before he became ill and died. At this point we can only presume what he meant and what he ultimately wanted. (We can, however, make it mean what we want.) Yet there is a greatness in this play, a haunting sense of evil, disintegration and humiliation. It’s unlike any play I’ve read. I strongly recommend it.
May 14, 2007
The best translation out there of the first modern tragedian. Includes all Buchner's works, one of which is a heartbreaking translation of the short story/essay "Lenz," the reading of which is key to understanding Buchner's aesthetic. Mueller captures the frantic, desperate poetry of "Woyzeck" unlike any other translation I've read. Top notch.
August 13, 2011
Read Danton's Death, Woyzeck, Lenz and the letters.
I like his writing but I think that his age shows. Woyzeck is very good (four stars for it!) but the other works, I wouldn't think especially remarkable. But of course, my knowledge of theatre, and german lit is incredibly, unbelievably limited.
I like his writing but I think that his age shows. Woyzeck is very good (four stars for it!) but the other works, I wouldn't think especially remarkable. But of course, my knowledge of theatre, and german lit is incredibly, unbelievably limited.
May 14, 2007
Pretty similar to the OUP.
July 18, 2008
It's a kind of omnibus, but Woyzeck, Lenz, and much of what else is here is terrifyingly good. My favourite discovery from those German literature classes I took.
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January 29, 2013Read for grad school: Danton's Death, Leonce and Lena, Woyzeck.
July 12, 2013
Danton's Death is on my not so short list of plays I'd like to stage. I did a couple of cuttings from it for scene workshops and they went over well. Too many plays, not enough time.
February 2, 2014
3 great games (drama) in his short life of the great German writer.
March 19, 2014
Nii veider raamat, et sellele võib vastavalt tujust suvalise hulga tähti anda. Tõlge on võrratu.
July 25, 2016
Die Kunst, Mitmenschlichkeit zu lernen in vier Stücken.
I. Dantons Tod - wie wir siegen
II. Lenz - wie wir alleine sind
III. Leonce und Lena - wie wir lieben
IV. Woyzeck - wie wir scheitern
I. Dantons Tod - wie wir siegen
II. Lenz - wie wir alleine sind
III. Leonce und Lena - wie wir lieben
IV. Woyzeck - wie wir scheitern
November 13, 2020
个人之间，整个全集里只有《丹东之死》值得一读；即使对一个天才来讲，23岁刚出头可能还是太年轻了一点。
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February 14, 2024In dieser historisch-kritischen Ausgabe habe ich nochmals "Woyzeck" und „Leonce und Lena“ für mein Neuere deutsche Literatur-Seminar gelesen.
Geniale Dramen.
Geniale Dramen.
March 4, 2016
Woyzeck: horrible tragedy, no fun to read at all. For masochists.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews