Woyzeck

Composition and textual history

Büchner probably began writing the play between June and September 1836. It is loosely based on the true story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a Leipzig wigmaker who later became a soldier. In 1821, Woyzeck, in a fit of jealousy, murdered Christiane Woost, a 46-year-old widow with whom he had been living; he was later publicly beheaded. Büchner's work remained in a fragmentary state at the time of his early death in 1837.

The play was first made public in a heavily edited and augmented version by Karl Emil Franzos, who published it in periodicals in 1875 and 1877, before including it in his edition of Büchner's collected works in 1879. Franzos mistakenly understood the title character's name in the manuscripts as "Wozzeck"; the play bore that title in its first stage productions, and in subsequent published editions based on Franzos' version. The play was not performed until November 8, 1913 at the Residenztheater, Munich, where it was produced by Max Reinhardt.

Not only did Franzos have to cope with Büchner's "microscopically small" handwriting, but the pages had faded so badly that they had to be chemically treated to make the text decipherable at all. Franzos was unaware of the real-life basis of the drama. The play was first generally disseminated in 1921 through the appearance of a new edition, edited by Georg Witkowski, which introduced the corrected title Woyzeck.

Plot summary

Franz Woyzeck, a lonely soldier stationed in a provincial German town, is living with Marie, the mother of his child who is not blessed by the church as the child was born out of wedlock. Woyzeck earns extra money for his family by performing menial jobs for the Captain and agreeing to take part in medical experiments conducted by the Doctor. At one of these experiments, the Doctor tells Woyzeck that he must eat nothing but peas. Woyzeck's mental health is breaking down and he begins to experience a series of apocalyptic visions. Meanwhile, Marie grows tired of Woyzeck and turns her attentions to a handsome drum major who, in an ambiguous scene taking place in Marie's bedroom, sleeps with her.

With his jealous suspicions growing, Woyzeck confronts the drum major, who beats Woyzeck up and humiliates him. Finally, Woyzeck stabs Marie to death by a pond. While a third act trial is claimed by some, notably A. H. J. Knight and Fritz Bergemann, to have been part of the original conception (what may be the beginning of a courtroom scene survives), the fragment, as left by Büchner, ends with Woyzeck disposing of the knife in the pond while trying to clean himself of the blood.

Here Franzos inserted the stage direction "ertrinkt" (he drowns), and although this emendation according to Knight "almost amounts to a forgery", most versions employ drowning as an appropriate resolution to the story.

Notable productions

Since the original play was unfinished, many productions have taken liberties with the play's dialogue and scene order. Notable productions include:

a 1913 first production at residenztheater, Munich, directed by Eugen Kilian

a 1925 opera adaptation by Alban Berg

a 1969 stage adaptation at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm directed by Ingmar Bergman starring Thommy Berggren. The translation Bergman used was by Per Erik Wahlund, and in 1970 the translation was published by Sällskapet Bokvännerna, in Stockholm, with 24 woodcuts by the Swedish artist Torsten Billman.

In the 1975 staging by the Classic Stage Company starring Ron Perlman, Christopher Martin "stressed the fluidity of the play's movement, and its sullen realism" according to Clive Barnes.

a 1979 film directed by Werner Herzog

a 1990 stage adaptation at Hartford Stage directed by Richard Foreman starring David Patrick Kelly

a 1997 stage version by Keith Fowler. Fowler prepared his own translation for the Woyzeck he directed at the University of California, Irvine. In considering the traditional arrangements of scenes — whether to start with the scene in which Woyzeck is shaving his captain, the doctor's lecture, or when Woyzeck is in the woods and hears voices below the ground; and whether to end with Woyzeck's trial or his drowning — Fowler notes how each arrangement makes a different thematic statement, viz.:

Start: Shaving / End: Trial / Statement: Oppression of the lower classes by those in power.

Start: Woods / End: Drowning / Statement: Deranged Woyzeck destroys himself.

Adaptations

The many adaptations of Woyzeck include:

Wozzeck, the opera by Alban Berg, completed 1922, premiered in Berlin in December 1925.

Wozzeck, the opera by Manfred Gurlitt, premiered in Bremen in April 1926.

Wozzeck, the 1947 film by Georg C. Klaren

Woyzeck, the 1969 play by Ingmar Bergman

Woyzeck, the 1979 film by Werner Herzog

Wodzeck, the 1984 film by Oliver Herbrich

Different Drummer, the 1984 one-act ballet by Kenneth MacMillan

Woyzeck, the 1994 film by János Szász

Wozzeck, the mid-1990s novel by Ukrainian writer Yuriy Izdryk

Woyzeck, the musical conceived by Robert Wilson, with lyrics and music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan; the songs from which are on Waits's Blood Money album

Re: Woyzeck, the modernized play by Jeremy Gable (in which Georg Büchner becomes a character in his own play)

The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, the production by Punchdrunk based on Woyzeck but set in a 1960s film studio. The production ran from 20 June 2013 – 6 July 2014.

Please!, the performance and puppet show by Felicia Cooper, completed 2025, premiered in Minneapolis at the Red Eye Theater.