Georg Büchner

Büchner, Georg (1813–37), German dramatist, forerunner of expressionism. His Danton's Death (1835) and Woyzeck (1837) use colloquial language and sometimes sordid settings to trace the powerlessness of isolated individuals against historical forces of society. Woyzeck, for example, is a soldier pressured into murdering his unfaithful mistress. Lenz, an unfinished work, is about a dramatist on the verge of madness.