About the work
Georg Büchner's revolutionary drama in four acts was written in 1835, appeared in a censored first edition that same year, and was only fully published posthumously. The premiere took place only in 1902 in Berlin. Büchner wrote the play at the age of 21 in his Hessian exile; today it is considered a pioneering work of modern drama.
Plot
Paris, March/April 1794. The French Revolution is in its Reign of Terror phase. Georges Danton, once a leading Jacobin, has withdrawn from active politics out of weariness and disgust at Robespierre's rhetoric of virtue. Robespierre and Saint-Just see in Danton and his followers (Camille Desmoulins, Hérault de Séchelles, Philippeau) a threat. Despite warnings, Danton does not defend himself — a mixture of fatalism and existential exhaustion paralyses him. He is arrested, tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and in a famous defence speech puts the Revolution itself on trial. In vain: Robespierre forcibly cuts proceedings short. On 5 April 1794 Danton and his friends are guillotined. Camille's wife Lucile goes mad and cries on the street „Long live the king!", in order to be executed too.
Cultural significance
Dantons Tod is one of the most modern dramas of the nineteenth century, and only in the twentieth was its radical fragmentariness recognised. Büchner's anticipation of Kafka, Beckett and the language of modernist theatre — the dissolution of subjectivity into historical violence — makes the play a permanent challenge. Productions by Jürgen Flimm, Peter Stein and Dimiter Gotscheff are among the reference performances.