The play first appeared in 1877 in a heavily edited version by Karl Emil Franzos,[1] and was first performed at the Residence Theatre in Munich on 8 November 1913.
It is loosely based on the true story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a Leipzig wigmaker who later became a soldier.
Not only did Franzos have to cope with Büchner's "microscopically small" handwriting, but the pages had faded so badly that they had to be chemically treated to make the text decipherable at all.
Woyzeck earns extra money for his family by performing menial jobs for the Captain and agreeing to take part in medical experiments conducted by the Doctor.
While a third act trial is claimed by some, notably A. H. J. Knight and Fritz Bergemann, to have been part of the original conception (what may be the beginning of a courtroom scene survives), the fragment, as left by Büchner, ends with Woyzeck disposing of the knife in the pond while trying to clean himself of the blood.