Büchner’s unfinished play, Woyzeck, written between 1835 and 1837, had been brought to light in 1879 by the writer Karl Emil Franzos. Georg Büchner, the son of a doctor, had been born in 1813 at Goddelau, near Darmstadt. He followed his father’s profession and won early distinction, although his radical political sympathies made it necessary for him to take refuge in Switzerland, where he was appointed to the medical faculty of Zürich University. His very promising career was cut short in 1837, when he died of typhoid.

Woyzeck consists of 27 scenes, which have, since 1879, appeared in various arrangements. It is based on the case of an unemployed barber, wig-maker and soldier, Johann Christian Woyzeck, who was found guilty, in 1821 in Leipzig, of the murder of a widow, Frau Woost, for which he was finally executed in Leipzig market-place in 1824, after appeals on the grounds of diminished responsibility had been rejected. The case a