Woyzeck

Woyzeck, a dramatic fragment by G. Büchner, written between 1835 and 1837 and, following its belated discovery, published in 1879 by K. E. Franzos under the title Wozzek. A revised version discussing variants of the MSS. and restoring the title Woyzeck was published by F. Bergemann in 1922. Uncertainties about textual detail as well as the scenic arrangement of the fragment, which consists of some 27 scenes with no act division, continued to be the subject of critical investigations. In 1967 W. R. Lehmann published a further revised edition containing scenic rearrangements, including the first and last scene of Bergemann's edition, and a reassessment of the phases of the composition of the fragment, the ending of which cannot be fully ascertained. The work was first performed on 8 November 1913 at the Residenztheater, Munich.

Büchner used as his source a report by Hofrat Clarus published in 1825 on the case of Johann Christian Woyzeck, an unemployed barber, wig-maker, and soldier, found guilty in Leipzig in 1821 of the murder of a widow, Frau Woost. He was sentenced to death, and executed in 1824 in the market-place in Leipzig. The execution, fixed for 1822, was delayed pending an appeal for a commutation of the sentence on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The appeal resulted in protracted investigations into Woyzeck's mental condition by more than one medical authority. Clarus's publication stirred up polemics on the case in a medical journal, Henkes Zeitschrift für die Staatsarzneikunde. From the analysis made by Clarus it may be inferred that Woyzeck was to a considerable degree victim of the political and social instability of the age. Orphaned at the age of 13, he served for want of other employment in various armies. Left in Stralsund in 1810 without identity papers, he was refused permission to marry the girl by whom he had a child. On his return to his native Leipzig, his application to enter the city's militia was turned down. At the time of the murder he was a beggar. (Other possible, but minor, sources have been suggested.)

Büchner uses his source freely and incorporates some of the prisoner's words to Clarus in his work. He concentrates on the simple humanity of Franz Woyzeck, whose sense of insecurity pervades all aspects of his life, including a mysterious sense of persecution by the Freemasons and visions of doom relating to the Bible. This aspect, revealing the extent of Woyzeck's mental disturbance, dominates the scene Freies Feld. Die Stadt in der Ferne with which the fragment opens in Lehmann's edition; it is followed by the scene Die Stadt, introducing the central figures of the dramatic complication: Marie, with whom Woyzeck has set up home and from whom he has a child, although for reasons of poverty they have remained unmarried, and the drum-major (Tambourmajor). The crucial ending of the scene reveals Marie's bewilderment at Woyzeck's increasingly strange behaviour.

Caricatured representatives of society responsible for Woyzeck's plight are the captain (Hauptmann) and the doctor (Doktor). Serving in the army as a barber, Woyzeck is the object of bitter humiliation, both in the derisive speeches of the captain in the shaving scene with which Bergemann's version opens, and the inhuman experiments of the doctor, to whom Woyzeck's physical deterioration is of scientific interest. Woyzeck bears it all for the love of Marie and of his child, for whom he needs the extra money earned from the doctor in his experiments. On finding that Marie has allowed herself to be seduced by the drum-major, Woyzeck's world, meaningful only through his love, breaks down. He stabs Marie to death with a knife specially bought for the purpose and abandoned after the murder in the lake, into which he wades in the scene Woyzeck an einem Teich to cleanse himself of blood. Woyzeck's monologues in this and the preceding scene (Abend. Die Stadt in der Ferne) reflect his utter wretchedness, his fear of the consequences of his deed being accompanied by the sting of Marie's betrayal. His world finally collapses when Karl, the idiot, runs away with his little son, who is frightened at his father's attempt to hug him. In the Lehmann version the fragment breaks off with this scene (Der Idiot. Das Kind. Woyzeck). (Film version by W. Herzog, 1979.)

Alban Berg based his opera Wozzeck (1921) on the arrangement by K. E. Franzos in which the emphasis in the finale is laid on the orphaned boy riding his hobby-horse. Berg first planned the opera after having attended the Viennese performance at the Kammerspiele in May 1914.

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