Danton's Death

Danton's Death
1981 Berlin production of "Dantons Tod"
Written by	Georg Büchner
Characters	Georges Danton Louis Legendre Charles-François Delacroix Camille Desmoulins Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles Pierre Philippeaux Fabre d'Églantine Louis-Sébastien Mercier Thomas Paine Maximilien de Robespierre Louis Antoine de Saint-Just Bertrand Barère Jean-Marie Collot d'Herbois Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne Pierre Gaspard Chaumette Arthur Dillon Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville Jean-Pierre-André Amar Jean-Henri Voulland Martial Joseph Armand Herman René-François Dumas () Antoine Simon Lucile Duplessis
Date premiered	1835; premiered 1902
Original language	German
Setting	French Revolution, Reign of Terror

Danton's Death (Dantons Tod) was the first play written by Georg Büchner, set during the French Revolution.

Georg Büchner wrote his works in the period between Romanticism and Realism in the so-called Vormärz era in German history and literature. The goal of the politically liberal poets of this period was that literature of a sham existence would again become an effective organ for renewing political and social life. They were opposed to the Romantics and against the restoration of the old order from prior to the Napoleonic Wars. They fought against convention, feudalism and absolutism, campaigned for freedom of speech, the emancipation of the individual, including women and Jews, and for a democratic constitution. They created a trend-poetry and time-poetry – in other words, poetry that dealt with problems of the time and with a commitment to liberal political ideas. Other writers of this trend and period were Heinrich Heine (author of Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen and Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (author of Faust and Erlkönig) and Franz Grillparzer (author of Weh dem, der lügt).

Whilst working on it Buchner always feared arrest. It only reached print in 1835 after being heavily cut and having the politics softened by sexual innuendo. Research for the play started in late 1834 and he completed a first version of the complete script in five weeks from mid January to mid February 1835. The same year saw a version published by Karl Gutzkow in the Literatur-Blatt of Eduard Duller's Phönix. Frühlings-Zeitung für Deutschland and a book-version in Johann David Sauerländer's Phönix-Verlag, including both the original and Duller's version and giving them the subtitle Dramatic Scenes from France's reign of terror to appease the censor. This makes it the only one of Büchner's plays to be published in his lifetime, albeit in a heavily censored version.

For a long time no theatre would dare put on the play and did not receive its premiere until 1902 – long after Büchner's death. This occurred on 5 January, in the Belle-Alliance-Theater in Berlin, in a production put on by the Vereins Neue Freie Volksbühne.