Karl Georg Büchner

Karl Georg Büchner (1813-1837): playwright, author of prose and poems, medical and natural scientist, revolutionary

Only for less than one year did Büchner live in Giessen, at age twenty, but this year became a phase of his life in which sharpened political beliefs and consequently turned them into political actions. In those days, Giessen was a centre of opposition in the upper part of Hessen, and Büchner joined the conspirative forces for freedom and against despotism. His political aims were uncompromising: he fought for a republic-style government of free and equal individuals and for a radical change in social conditions. Founding a conspirative "Society for Human Rights," he played an historically important role at the eve of the 1848 German revolution and the democratic movements in Hessen.

Though Georg Büchner died young at the age of 23 and only left a small oeuvre, he is considered to be one of the most important figures of that time and a founder of modern European literature. His three dramas Danton's Death, Leonce and Lena, and Woyzeck are still considered groundbreaking today.

As Prof. Heiner Goebbels described in his inaugural lecture for the Georg Büchner Professorship in 2018, his early encounter with two of these dramas played an important role for his artistic development from composing theatre music to becoming a composer and director of musical theatre: In 1980, when he composed Woyzeck for the directors Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhoff at the Bochumer Schauspielhaus, and in 1990 while composing Danton's Death for director Ruth Berghaus at the Thalia Theater, Hamburg.

Inspired by the intermedial strategies of Büchner that moved between literary, aural, visual, and theatrical elements, the Georg Büchner Professorship is considered as an artistic research in rethinking media-based change. Heiner Goebbels works with multimedia installations and performances, staged concerts, radio works, compositions for orchestras and ensemble, contributes internationally with lectures and publications, and offers teaching courses for Buechner's Woyzeck (2019) and contemporary musical theatre (2020) at the JLU. 

Georg Büchner studied medical science at the University of Giessen during winter term of 1833/34 and summer term of 1834.