Woyzeck

Limited Edition. 8vo. Pp. 61, [3]. Red leather bound, gilt-embossed to cover and spine, top edge gilt, printed in red and black on untrimmed laid paper. Edited from the poet's manuscripts and with an afterword by Georg Witkowski. N° 117 of 520 numbered copies, in the publisher's red leather variant.

Limitierte Auflage. 8°, 61 S., 3 Bl., roter Original-Ganzledereinband mit Goldschrift auf Deckel und Rücken, unbeschnittenes Büttenpapier, Kopfgoldschnitt, in rot und schwarz gedruckt. Nach den Handschriften des Dichters herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort von Georg Witkowski. Nr. 117 von 520 Exemplaren.

Age-toned page edges, slightly rubbed to edges, somewhat more so to head than tail of spine, else a well-preserved copy. Seiten und Schnittkanten sind altersbedingt gebräunt. Einband am Rand leicht berieben, Buchrücken oben und unten etwas stärker berieben, ansonst gut erhaltenes Exemplar.

Written in 1836, Woyzeck is often considered the first truly modern play. It is loosely based on the case of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a soldier driven mad by inhuman military discipline and acute social deprivation who was publicly beheaded in Leipzig in 1824 for slaying his mistress in a fit of jealousy. It remained in a fragmentary state at the time of Büchner's untimely death in 1837 and was first published in 1879 in a heavily revised version by Karl Emil Franzos.

It was not performed until November 8, 1913 at the Residenztheater, Munich, where it was produced by Max Reinhardt. Its many adaptations include the opera Wozzeck by Alban Berg, completed in 1922 and premiered in Berlin in December 1925, and the 1979 movie Woyzeck by Werner Herzog, starring Klaus Kinski and Eva Mattes.

[Sarkowski 245]