Büchner, Georg (gā`ôrk bükh`nər), 1813–37, German dramatist. He was a student of medicine and a political agitator. He died at the age of 24, leaving a powerful drama, Danton's Death (1835, tr. 1928), a pessimistic view of the French Revolution and revolutionary politics; a fragmentary tragedy, Woyzeck (1837, tr. 1928), a psychological study of an alienated character that Alban Berg Berg, Alban (äl`bän bĕrk), 1885–1935, Austrian composer.
..... Click the link for more information. adapted for his opera Wozzeck; and a comedy, Leonce and Lena (1850, tr. 1928). Büchner greatly admired the poet J. M. R. Lenz Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold (yä`kôp mĭkh`äĕl rīn`hôlt lĕnts), 1751–92, German writer.
..... Click the link for more information. , whom he made the hero of a novella, Lenz (1838, tr. 1955), which he never completed. His plays, unorthodox in subject and style, were not staged until many decades after his death.

Bibliography

See collections of his plays ed. by V. Price (tr. 1971) and M. Hamburger (tr. 1972); studies by A. H. J. Knight (1951) and R. Hauser (1974).

Büchner, Georg

(born Oct. 17, 1813, Goddelau, Hesse-Darmstadt—died Feb. 19, 1837, Zürich, Switz.) German dramatist. As a medical student, he became involved in revolutionary politics and was forced to flee to Zürich. There he wrote plays marked by vivid imagination and unconventional structure, combining extreme naturalism with visionary power; he is regarded as a forerunner of the Expressionist movement. His first play, Danton's Death (1835), a drama of the French Revolution, was followed by Leonce and Lena (1836), a satire on the illusions of Romanticism. His last play, Woyzeck (1836), anticipated the social drama of the 1890s with its compassion for the poor and oppressed; it became the basis of a famous opera by Alban Berg.