Büchner's special quality, and that which makes him seem more contemporary than almost anything written today, is his total, uncompromising honesty of emotion and intellect.

The German writer Georg Büchner, who died in 1837 aged 23, left only three works for the theatre. Danton's Death, his great fresco of the French Revolution, was written in five weeks when Büchner was under threat of arrest for his own revolutionary activities. His sad comedy, Leonce and Lena, was composed in haste for a publisher's competition for which it was entered too late. The extraordinary proletarian tragedy Woyzeck was left unfinished at Büchner's death. Virtually unknown until the end of the nineteenth century, the plays have found an important place in the modern international repertory.