Georg Buchner began writing Woyzeck around the year 1836 while residing in France where the play remained unfinished upon his death in 1837. There is little indication to where the play is set and what time period the author intended for us to portray. However, Georg Buchner was born and raised in a rural setting near the town of Darmstadt. Darmstadt, all of Prussia (former kingdom and state of Germany), and multiple global affairs were undergoing philosophical, artistic, and government turmoils that parallel those that the characters undergo in Woyzeck. Therefore, I believe it would be appropriate to set the play where Buchner grew up...a world he was intimate with.
In 1836, Prussia was going through what we now call German Romanticism, which does not mean that everyone was all starry eyed and writing romantic poems. It was, in fact, a movement that looked to the Middle Ages for a simplier and more unified life. People were striving to better themselves and the world around them. The Germany we know today had not yet been born but was divided into "several hundred kingdoms, principalities, duchies, bishoprics, fiefdoms and independent cities and towns (Source)." (think Texas' counties but each of them having different forms of government) The country and, it seemed, the entire world (Battle of the Alamo occurred February 23 – March 6, 1836) was going through a state of rebellion to the old way of life in hopes of a new beginning...a renaissance of sorts. This way of thinking led to advancements in railways, more comfortable housing laws, innovative medical practices and et cetera. In 1834, the German Customs Union treaty (Zollverein) was enacted which created economic unification by removing tarriff and trade barriers among 18 of the German States and the predecessor of the present-day university (Technische Universität Darmstadt) was founded in 1836.However, all this was still in its baby stages; still learning, growing with mistakes being made along the way. We know today that a man living off only peas is not a good idea, but this world hadn't fully grasped that concept yet.
One of the main topics that I came across upon my research of Woyzeck was that this piece was a critique of the social system that was in place at that time. He completely rejected the ideas of the Romantics and decided to "realistically depict what he saw as the hopelessness of life in a world where isolation, monotony, and suffering prevail and are perpetuated by deterministic historical and biological forces (source)." Buchner was not the only critical mind during the German Romanticism movement. Many movers and shakers such as Heine, Ludwig Börne and Karl Gutzkow tossed aside the ideas of Hegel and Goethe in favor of a more political form of literature. Some were condemned to periods of imprisonment from which Buchner narrowly escaped. This innovative literature came to be known as Bourgeois Realism.
The world in which this play is set is where poverty ran amok, cholera spread like wildfire and where butcher's meat was a luxury. The average life expectancy was low and child mortality was very high. The three main antagonist in Woyzeck are from from a higher social class and openly express and exert their view of the world in this light upon our protagonist which helps lead him to his demise. Woyzeck presents "a picture of material distress, of physical and psychical sickness, of degradation and humiliation at the hands of a society which systematically refuses to recognize him as a human being (Buchner)." People of higher social status of the 19th Century had a cold hearted attitude towards the poor. They believed that anyone could become successful through arduous work so if you were penniless, homeless and hungry it was your fault. People did not look to others for help and the government did not provide positive resources for the lower class to go to. This was still dark and alien world from which are familiar with today.
As you can see, the world in which Georg Buchner was raised (Darmstadt) would be an appropriate setting in that the philosophical, artistic, and government turmoils parallel those that the characters undergo in Woyzeck. I believe that by placing the play directly into the world in which Buchner was so intimately familiar with will only bring us closer to understanding his intent and the story of Woyzeck itself.
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