by Robert Lonoke

A list of the all-time top ten European prodigies would contain several familiar names—Mozart, Rimbaud, and the like. One of the most extraordinary, and one of the least familiar, would be the German dramatist, Georg Büchner (1813-1837). A medical student of such prococity that he was appointed lecturer at the University of Zurich when he was only 23, he had by that time also gotten into trouble with German authorities for his political activism, and had become a published dramatist. Only a few months after arriving in Zurich, he died of typhoid fever in early 1837 at the age of 24.

Büchner left behind three plays. One, Woyzeck, is world-famous because of Alban Berg’s opera (spelled "Wozzeck"). Another, a comedy called Leonce and Lena, is still part of the German theatrical canon. The third work, Dantons Tod (Danton’s Death), he wrote when he was 18. First published in 1835 with the subtitle, "Dramatic Scenes from the Reign of Terror," the play provides the definitive analysis of revolutionary politics.

What the 1960s are to us—a time of upheaval and great hope ending in bloody catastropohe—the 1790s were to Büchner’s generation. The French Revolution, in its first flower so idealistic, had quickly degenerated into bloody civil war, with various factions fighting for control.

Trivia note for political junkies: The left-middle-right concept was a product of the seating arrangement in the revolution’s Chamber of Deputies.

While the American Revolution only 15 years earlier had ended in stability, the chaos of the French Revolution provided the modern world with its first clear views of the monsters created by unbridled power. All the questions and the roles to be played by various types of leaders were laid out as the revolution unfolded.

By 1793, things were pretty well out of hand. The obvious enemies of the revolution, including the king, had been executed. Instead of entering a new, edenic world of liberty, equality, and fraternity, those in power found themselves moving into nightmare territory where the revolution began to consume its own children.

Georges Danton, one of the early leaders, saw the madness for what it was and finally refused to participate further. Robespierre, in contrast, saw mass guillotinings as a way to root out what he perceived to be the last vestiges of "vice". Sound familiar?

Out of the mass guillotinings of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, which was designed to "cleanse" the body politic, came the belligerant dictatorship of Napoleon. Not until 1815 and the Congress of Vienna did European powers manage to put in place an era of fragile peace. The case can be made that Europe did not fully recover from the French Revolution for 200 years, until the founding of the European Union and the collapse of the U.S.S.R.

For now, we offer you a brief excerpt, a tidbit: the scene early in the drama when Danton and Robespierre first exchange views. The setting is old, the clothes are out-of-date. But the ideas will sound familiar. Remember how in a campaign debate, our boy-president expressed shock at the suggestion that there could have been even one innocent person among the hundreds executed in Texas? He was not the first political prig, nor, of course, will he be the last.