Georg Buchner

The Georg Buchner Prize is the highest literary honor for German language writers, and the full extent of Buchner’s influence—from Gerhart Hauptmann to Christa Wolf, Max Reinhardt to Robert Wilson, Alban Berg to Tom Waits—defies cataloging.

When Georg Buchner died in 1837 at the age of twenty-three, he left behind a small and heterogenous body of work, most of it unpublished: three plays, a novella, a political pamphlet, a dissertation, medical lectures, and letters. Matthew Wilson Smith has newly translated Buchner’s introduction to On Cranial Nerves. Each text is accompanied by explanatory annotations. The editor’s introduction examines the complexities of Buchner’s short life and how they informed his writing. The volume also contains ten illustrations.

“Contexts” includes Buchner’s correspondence with the people who knew him best, impressions of Buchner from a fellow medical student, excerpts from Buchner’s diary, the wanted poster calling for Buchner’s arrest for political conspiracy as well as the real-life inspirations his novella, Lenz, and his best-known play, Woyzeck.

For ease of reference, “Criticism” is topically arranged by work and includes assessments by, among others, Laura Ginters, Victor Brombert, Bertolt Brecht, Henry Schmidt, Andrew Webber, Rainer Maria Rilke, and George Steiner. Three accounts of important productions of Danton’s Death are reprinted, including John Houseman’s remarks on Orson Welles’s staging. Finally, the speeches of four winners of the Georg Buchner Prize—Paul Celan, Christa Wolf, Heiner Muller, and Durs Grunbein—are reprinted in their entirety.

A Chronology of Buchner’s life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.