"Wagt!" Büchner - Danton and the Idea of Europe

A staged reading by the BüchnerBühne ensemble based on Georg Büchner's "Danton's Death", part of the quarterly theme "Büchner & Politics".

"Wagt!" - the word echoes in the Committee of Public Safety, from Saint-Just's lips, as a quotation of Danton turned against Danton himself: "Wagt! Danton should not have taught us this word for nothing." It is the bitterest line in the play. The audacity that ignited the revolution becomes the tool of its murderers.

Büchner wrote "Danton's Death" in 1835, at age 22, fleeing from a Hessian state prison. The drama is not a historical play - it is a philosophy of history, a cry against ideologies that transform people into systems. The French Revolution was Europe's first great attempt to politically realize freedom, equality, and human dignity. Büchner shows how this attempt devoured its own children.

The staged reading places Saint-Just's revolutionary speech justifying Danton's execution at its centre - and thereby makes explicit what Büchner sensed: that the logic of this speech will repeat itself. In Europe. Again and again. "The world spirit uses our arms like volcanoes and floods. What is the difference whether our enemies die of plague or revolution?" One need only listen to who said this later as well.

The staged reading dispenses with costumes and props. Six voices carry Büchner's text - and thereby pose a central question to the space: What do we dare to believe? What do we dare to sacrifice? And above all: for whom?