Georg Büchner · 1835

Dantons Tod

In spring 1794 Paris, the Revolution’s most famous orator is tired and doubtful, and the men who run the Terror are closing in.

Dantons Tod (Danton’s Death) is a four-act drama by Georg Büchner, written in about five weeks in early 1835 and first staged in Berlin in 1902. It follows Georges Danton and his circle in the last days of March and early April 1794, when Robespierre and his allies turn against them. Büchner builds the scenes from historical sources and long passages of real political speeches, so the characters talk as much as they act.

First published: 1835
Literary form: play
Original language: Deutsch
Published text languages: Deutsch · Vietnamese
Reading time: ≈ 1 h 25 min read

No translation is published in this interface language yet. You can read the original or another available edition.

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Black-and-white wood engraving of a walled yard full of people: a man in an open shirt stands at left, and at centre a man in a light shirt and breeches waits beside a tall wooden frame, while officers in tricorn hats and onlookers press round him. — Related image. “Exécution de Danton”, wood engraving by Charles Barbant (1844–1921) after a drawing by Frédéric Théodore Lix (1830–1897), second half of the 19th century. It is a period image of an execution of Danton, not a picture from Büchner’s play, and it does not name the figures. Uncropped.Charles Barbant after Frédéric Théodore Lix, “Exécution de Danton”, wood engraving, second half of the 19th century, via Wikimedia Commons (scan credited there to Getty Images). Public domain. Source

Why it matters

Dantons Tod is a four-act drama and Georg Büchner’s first play, set in Paris in the spring of 1794, during the lull between the first and second terrors. Georges Danton, who according to Wikipedia created the Revolutionary Tribunal, now wants the killing to stop, but he is tired, fond of wine and gaming, and doubtful about his own cause. Robespierre’s allies move against him and his friends. In the Conciergerie the prisoners argue about God, life and death as often as they plot. The play still feels alive because it shows a revolution as a machine that devours its own makers, and it gives ordinary people lines of their own, not only the orators.

Büchner’s method was new. He drew on many historical sources and quoted real political speeches at length, and in the twentieth century the play was read as a forerunner of documentary theatre, according to Wikipedia. He wrote the first full version in five weeks, from mid-January to mid-February 1835, while he feared arrest. That year a version appeared in Eduard Duller’s Phönix literary paper, edited by Karl Gutzkow, and a book edition carried a subtitle Duller invented to soothe the censor. The printed text was heavily cut. It is the only Büchner play published in his lifetime. No theatre dared stage it for decades; the first performance came on 5 January 1902 at the Belle-Alliance-Theater in Berlin.

Notice how often the scenes slide into talk: the prisoners debate God and death in the third act, a drunken citizen in the first act complains that his daughter must sell herself to feed the family, and Danton swings between resignation and the belief that the Convention will not dare act against him. Notice too that Robespierre is shown with a social conscience as well as a readiness to kill. Büchner’s own programme appears in a letter of 28 July 1835, quoted by German Wikipedia: the dramatist’s highest task is to come as close as possible to history as it really happened. This page uses a nineteenth-century engraving of an execution scene, not a stage picture from the play.

Introduction written for LitMundi with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed below.

Themes

Revolution devouring its makers
The Terror and the Tribunal
Danton’s fatalism and weariness
Friendship among suspected revolutionaries
History as the dramatist’s duty

Context

Georg Büchner wrote Dantons Tod in early 1835, after research that began in late 1834, and in constant fear of arrest. It was his first play and the only one of his dramas printed in his lifetime, in a version cut for the censor. Its first performance came in Berlin in 1902, sixty-seven years later.

Before you read

A four-act drama in many short scenes, in German; the text on this site is the German source from Project Gutenberg. Content note: political killing, the Terror and the guillotine, a suicide by poison, and coarse talk about sex and prostitution.

Good to know

First performed: 5 January 1902, Belle-Alliance-Theater, Berlin
Original language: German (Dantons Tod)
Form: Drama in four acts
Published in his lifetime: 1835, heavily cut for the censor

Sources for this introduction

All editions

Original · source checked

Dantons Tod

Deutsch

Dantons Tod · German, Project Gutenberg #5072

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Translation · AI reviewed

Cái chết của Danton

Tiếng Việt

Bản dịch tiếng Việt bằng AI · đánh giá AI v2

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Translation availability is still being researched. A draft is not evidence that no translation exists.

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