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The Reviviscence of Georg Büchner

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Edward Franklin Hauch
Edward Franklin Hauch*
Affiliation:
Hamilton College
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Extract

Georg Büchner, poet and scientist, was born at Goddelau in the vicinity of Darmstadt, October 17, 1813. Not long afterwards the family moved to Darmstadt; this accounts for the fact that Darmstadt is frequently spoken of as Georg Büchner's native city. He studied the natural sciences, later also philosophy, at Strassburg and Giessen. While a student at Giessen he became involved in secret revolutionary activities, as a result of which, and particularly as a result of his connection with the composition, publication, and secret distribution of the inflammatory pamphlet, The Hessian Courier, he was forced to flee in March, 1835, to Strassburg. Henceforth he kept himself aloof from political and seditious machinations and devoted himself exclusively to scientific and philosophical studies and to literary work. For his achievements in science and philosophy the University of Zürich granted him the doctorate, and he began giving lectures there on comparative anatomy in October, 1836. He died of typhoid, February 19, 1837, just four months after his removal to Zürich, at the age of twenty-three years and six months, honored and lamented by his colleagues and students, upon whom he had made an unusually deep impression.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 1929 , pp. 892 - 900
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 892 Robert F. Arnold, Das deutsche Drama, p. 811.

Note 2 in page 892 Adolf Bartels, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1902, II, 310.

Note 3 in page 892 Eduard Engel, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1906, II, 813.

Note 4 in page 893 Georg Büchners Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Leipzig, Inselverlag, 1922, pp. 542-543. Büchner's letter to Gutzkow, February 21, 1835. Gutzkow published the letter in 1838.

Note 5 in page 894 Adolf Bartels (Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1909) wrongly includes Woyzeck among the works of the 1850 edition.

Note 6 in page 894 Deutsche Dichtung, XXIX, 12.

Note 7 in page 895 Deutsche Dichtung, XXIX, 197.

Note 8 in page 895 Johann Proelss, Das junge Deutschland, 1892, p. 585.

Note 9 in page 895 Julian Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, ed. 1896, V, 259. This is the only edition to which I had access; the passage referred to probably differs little, if at all, from the text of the original edition of 1853 (II, 213).

Note 10 in page 895 Die deutsche Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1900, pp. 164-168.

Note 11 in page 896 Friedrich Hebbels Tagebücher, ed. Herrmann Krumm, 1904, I, 259. None of the diary material was published prior to 1885.

Note 12 in page 896 Verirrte Deutsche, 1904, p. 129.

Note 13 in page 896 Vogt und Koch, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1910, II, 419. The phrase “glorification of the Terror” also occurs, but I am not willing to say where.

Note 14 in page 897 Deutsche Dichtung, XXIX, 289.

Note 15 in page 897 Literarisches Echo, XII, 1682.

Note 16 in page 898 Friedrich Kummer, Deutsche Literaturgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, 1922, II, 315.

Note 17 in page 898 The Plays of Georg Büchner. Translated with an Introduction by Geoffrey Dunlop. New York, 1928, p. 9. Accuracy in detail is evidently not the sole objective of this translator. But even where there are deviations, with or without intent, from the exact text of the original, the translator achieves throughout the whole book an unusually successful transfer of Büchner's amazing subtleties of atmosphere and emotion.

Note 18 in page 899 His friend, Karl Minnigerode, languished in a Hessian prison for three years as a consequence of his complicity in the Hessian Courier affair.