Applause from the Jury: Publicness, Orality, Trial by Jury, and the Revolutionary Tribunal in Büchner’s Dantons Tod Sophia Clark University of Central Oklahoma Abstract: In Dantons Tod (1835), Büchner’s stage direction of Beifall , or “applause,” in scenes before the Revolutionary Tribunal is a citation of the historical anxiety stretching from ancient times up to Büchner’s contemporaries surrounding reformed trial procedure that opens the theatricality of justice to public participation� This paper argues that the applause stage direction is Büchner’s contribution to the interpretation of a specific historical judicial problem: that of negotiating the requirements of radical legal reform in a new Republic-reform, such as public, oral trial by jury, that manifested outwardly in the French Revolution as tools of tyranny during the Terror and remained at the heart of legal reform debates in the German states at the time of the play’s publication� At stake is the desire to open institutions of justice to public participation, yet there remains a distinct fear that justice will lose its legitimacy as a mere theatrical spectacle� Through the trial scenes in Dantons Tod , however, Büchner emphasizes an understanding that justice is indeed theatrical and performance-based� The question is no longer whether justice is theater but rather: who controls the theater of the courtroom, who is allowed to participate, and to what extent? Keywords: legal reform, theater, stage directions, trial procedure, performance, French Revolution, justice on stage “It is reserved for the theater to exhibit on its stage the fact that the court is a theater�” 1 Cornelia Vismann, Medien der Rechtsprechung (2011) 36 Sophia Clark The stage direction Beifall in Act 3, Scenes 4 and 9 of Georg Büchner’s Dantons Tod (1835) during the defense speeches of Büchner’s fictionalized Georg Danton include a clear reference to the theater as Danton takes command of the stage of the Revolutionary Tribunal� 2 This stage direction is one of the many instances of historical citation in the play� Recent studies by Rüdiger Campe and Matthew S� Buckley have opened new avenues of interpretive possibility for Büchner’s extensive use of citation and serve as a starting point for an analysis of the legal historical references to applause in the context of the play. An analysis of the “applause” stage direction specifically in Büchner’s drama reveals a direct conversation between the play and the legacy and repercussions of French trial systems regarding German legal reform debates, including the thought of leading German jurists, all of whom share in the face of liberal trial reform the anxiety that the court of law might become theater� This essay analyzes the place of revolutionary legal reform in Georg Büchner’s Dantons Tod , specifically the principles publicness, orality, and trial by jury, which had taken hold of legal reform discourse of the early nineteenth century, for example, in the legal writings of Paul Johann Feuerbach in an 1819 pamphlet on “Geschwornen-Gerichte” and the 1821 book Betrachtungen über die Oeffentlichkeit und Mündlichkeit der Gerechtigkeitspflege � In response to these discourses, the “applause” stage direction represents Büchner’s dramaturgical interpretation of these very fears surrounding reform and the challenges facing a future republic� In March 1834, Georg Büchner wrote to his fiancée, Minna Jaeglé, that he had been studying the history of the French Revolution� For days, he says, he has been paralyzed by the “Fatalismus der Geschichte” and has been unable to write ( Werke 288)� This fatalism, however, did not stop the then 20-year-old author in his political activity or literary pursuits for long� In Giessen, he joined the Gesellschaft der Menschenrechte and participated in revolutionary planning, returning to Darmstadt to found a local chapter in April of 1834� He published the revolutionary pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote with Friedrich Ludwig Weidig in the summer and fall of 1834, during which time many members of the Society were arrested, including Weidig� Shortly thereafter, he sent his manuscript of the French Revolutionary drama, Dantons Tod , to his publisher Karl Gutzkow in February of 1835� Fatalism is perhaps the key word that characterizes the tone of Büchner’s four-act play� Set during the Terror of 1793/ 1794, Dantons Tod recounts the trial and execution of the historical Georges Jacques Danton, the architect of the Committee of Public Safety, at the hands of his fellow revolutionaries and rival Jacobins led by Maximilien Robespierre� Unlike the active and temporarily rhetorically persuasive Jacobins who plan to eliminate them, Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 37 the opposition under the nihilistic leadership of Büchner’s Danton are depicted as disorganized and ineffective in the face of their downfall. The significance of Büchner, a revolutionary himself, choosing a moment of revolutionary terror and failure as subject matter for his play, and depicting his tragic hero, Danton, as resigned and even passive at times, can present a challenge for critics� Scholarship ranges from Buckley’s interpretation of the play as a “dramatic autopsy” of revolutionary action to Martin Wagner’s thesis of “perpetual revolution�” While this is not the central question of the present study, their interpretations provide models of analysis that consider both the play’s aesthetics and the politics of Büchner’s historical moment� In a letter from 28 July 1835 to his family addressing the play’s “immorality,” Büchner provides insight into the aesthetic program of his project: “[…] der dramatische Dichter ist in meinen Augen nichts, als ein Geschichtschreiber, steht aber über Letzterem dadurch, daß er uns die Geschichte zum zweiten Mal erschafft und uns gleich unmittelbar, statt eine trockne Erzählung zu geben, in das Leben einer Zeit hinein versetzt […]” ( Werke 305)� The dramatist’s goal, and thus Büchner’s, is to produce history a second time, but not as a dry story in the past tense, but rather directly in the present through the means available to him as a dramatic poet� Büchner continues: Der Dichter ist kein Lehrer der Moral, er erfindet und schafft Gestalten, er macht vergangene Zeiten wieder aufleben, und die Leute mögen dann daraus lernen, so gut, wie aus dem Studium der Geschichte und der Beobachtung dessen, was im menschlichen Leben um sie herum vorgeht� […] Wenn mir man übrigens noch sagen wollte, der Dichter müsse die Welt nicht zeigen wie sie ist, sondern wie sie sein solle, so antworte ich, daß ich es nicht besser machen will, als der liebe Gott […]� ( Werke 306) In the author’s own words, Büchner’s Danton seems to lie somewhere between historical specificity and anthropology brought to life through poetic expression, ostensibly without idealization or a moralizing objective, that is however still instructive to those who read it� The reader may learn just as much from the play of the dramatic poet as they might from the observation of human life and shall be transported into the very life of the historical moment the author depicts� Indeed, Büchner’s immediate approach to bringing the French Revolution to life a second time consists of intensive citation of historical sources from his months of study� He especially favors Carl Strahlheim’s Die Geschichte unserer Zeit and Louis-Adolphe Thiers’ Histoire de la révolution française for the various speeches before the National Convention and the Revolutionary Tribunal� As Buckley describes it, Büchner lets the French Revolution “speak for itself” (Buckley 124)� 38 Sophia Clark Büchner’s work continually cites moments and dialogues within and around the French Revolution so that it might live again for the reader� However, the unusual poetic execution and citational practice of Büchner’s project confounded some of its readers, according to the publisher of the literary section of the journal Phönix , Gutzkow, in a letter from 10 June 1836, because they could not pick apart what was quoted and what came from Büchner’s own hand� Gutzkow reports that readers would misidentify quoted jokes as Büchner’s additions, while attributing much of the rest of the work to external sources� The accusation was this: that Dantons Tod was nothing more than “ein dramatisiertes Kapitel des Thiers” ( Werke 350)� Indeed, according to Karl Viëtor’s estimation, about one-sixth of the text comes verbatim or as lightly edited quotes from his sources ( Werke 485)� What this aesthetic presentation and practice of citation amounts to is a richness in interpretive possibility and meaning of the highly intertextual, individual episodes� In his study on citation in Büchner’s work, Rüdiger Campe finds of Büchner’s citationality that “[b]eyond indicating the simple fact of a quotation from this or that history book […] [i]t meant that the work belonged to the sphere of social and political urgency rather than mere ‘poesy’ (or, in German, Dichtung)” (Campe 44)� Indeed, Büchner’s stage directions are themselves citations of the judicial theatricality of the French Revolution and are simultaneously in conversation with legal reform debates contemporary to Büchner� It would take nothing less than a revolutionary text to accomplish what the author ostensibly set out to do and be more than a collection of quotes arranged in chronological order� Buckley sees Büchner’s work of citation as exploring the mechanism of revolutionary action, “dramatizing the process through which the Revolution’s collapse was performed and experienced” (Buckley 130)� Buckley’s analysis emphasizes Büchner’s use of historical details, such as slogans and common phrases heard in the streets and its “open, episodic form, in which tragedy becomes […] merely one among several competing rhetorics of dramatic action and apprehension” (Buckley 124—25)� His observation that the play shifts “our attention to less-scripted and less-settled moments of the Revolution’s theatrical politics” (Buckley 126) is significant in that it articulates another break from classical drama: the dramaturgy of Dantons Tod switches focus from a unifying overarching historical theme or set of themes to smaller histories� This understanding of the drama as a fragmentary (but not fragmented) poetic interpretation of the French Revolution as a play of competing rhetorics, in which each episode of historical citation is of equal weight, allows readers to “zoom in” on smaller instances of citation, while simultaneously “zooming out” on their aesthetic and political meaning� Borrowing from Buckley’s concept of competing rhetorics and Campe’s assertion that Büchner’s citations indicate Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 39 political urgency, the following analysis of stage directions in the Revolutionary Tribunal and related scenes focuses on smaller histories and reads Büchner’s practice of citation, which is bound up in historical specificity as an aesthetic principle, for its larger political significance, namely, its engagement with discourses on legal reform� In Dantons Tod , Büchner uses the stage direction Beifall to indicate moments in which orators win over of audiences (and juries) and the theatrical conditions of trial procedure in revolutionary France� This “applause” is simultaneously a citation of the historical anxiety stretching from ancient times up to Büchner’s contemporaries surrounding reformed trial procedure that opens up the theatricality of justice to public participation� To be sure, the play’s use of stage directions is altogether sparse, and there is not much description of scenery� “Das Revolutionstribunal” is given as a setting in Scenes 4 and 9 of Act 3 without further description, and the descriptions of character actions are in general very brief, as is evident in the following examples from Act 3, Scene 6: “ St. <Just> wird hinausgerufen ,” “ Ein Schließer tritt ein ,” “ nimmt ein Papier ,” “ er schreibt und liest ,” “ St. Just, kommt zurück ,” etc� ( Werke 115—16)� That being the case, it might be tempting to read the stage directions as entirely practical rather than poetic decisions� However, this changes when the audience reactions to public speeches and their dramatic function in the play are scrutinized� In Act 2, Scene 7, Robespierre and St� Just speak before the National Convention, a body of “Deputierte” and “einige Stimmen” ( Werke 101), whose only function in the scene is to respond to their oratorical performances� Robespierre takes the stand first after Legendre, who has convinced the National Convention to allow Danton to speak before them if he is tried for treason� Robespierre opposes Legendre’s suggestion, claiming that Danton and the other Girondins should not receive any special privileges� This opening oratory is met with applause ( Beifall ) as the sole stage direction ( Werke 102)� He continues, ending his second salvo with “nie zittert die Unschuld vor der öffentlichen Wachsamkeit,” which garners general applause ( allgemeiner Beifall , Werke 103), and a third passage of oratory with the declaration: “Wir haben nur wenige Köpfe zu treffen und das Vaterland ist gerettet” ( Werke 103)� This, too, is met with applause ( Beifall )� He concludes with the words: “Ich verlange, daß Legendres Vorschlag zurückgewiesen werde,” to which “[d]ie Deputierten erheben sich sämtlich zum Zeichen allgemeiner Beistimmung” ( Werke 103)� St� Just then takes the podium not only to oppose Legendre, but to convince the crowd that more bloodshed is needed� He concludes his own lengthy speech with the following: 40 Sophia Clark ST� JUST� […] Die Revolution ist wie die Töchter des Pelias; sie zerstückt die Menschheit um sie zu verjüngern� Die Menschheit wird aus dem Blutkessel wie die Erde aus den Wellen der Sündflut mit urkräftigen Gliedern sich erheben, als wäre sie zum Erstenmale geschaffen. ( Langer, anhaltender Beifall. Einige Mitglieder erheben sich im Enthusiasmus �) ST� JUST � Alle geheimen Feinde der Tyrannei, welche in Europa und auf dem ganzen Erdkreise den Dolch des Brutus unter ihren Gewändern tragen, fordern wir auf diesen erhabenen Augenblick mit uns zu teilen� ( Die Zuhörer und die Deputierten stimmen d. Marseillaise an. ) ( Werke 104—05) In progressing from “ Beifall ” and “ allgemeiner Beifall ” to “ Langer, anhaltender Beifall ” to singing the Marseillaise by the end of the scene, the Tribunal audience expresses agreement with St� Just that the Revolution requires perpetual sacrifice. This crescendo of applause and displays of enthusiasm establishes a dramaturgical grammar with which to understand Danton’s later speeches before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which are the mirror events to the performances of Robespierre and St� Just� However, the applause in this initial scene, unlike in later scenes, is appropriate and expected in its context, namely, holding a public speech before an audience at the National Convention� The applause is, without doubt, confirmation of the speakers’ persuasive performance and rhetorical skill� Emotional appeals and emotional displays are par for the course� To point out that the public speeches before the National Convention in Büchner’s play are depicted as stage performances is almost trivial� In the legal trial in Büchner’s play, Danton speaks for the first time as an accused before the Revolutionary Tribunal in Act 3, Scene 4, which the reader knows has been manipulated to favor the bloody goals of the Jacobins� In his defense speech against the charge of conspiring with the enemies of the Revolution and the faction of Louis XVI, Herman, his accuser, condemns Danton’s boldness ( Kühnheit ) and passionate manner of speaking before the Tribunal and cautions him to be calmer� Danton rejects this warning, declaring that “[v] on einem Revolutionär wie ich darf man keine kalte Verteidigung erwarten� Männer meines Schlages sind in Revolutionen unschätzbar, auf ihrer Stirne schwebt das Genie der Freiheit,” which is met with “ Zeichen von Beifall unter den Zuhörern ” ( Werke 111)� In Herman’s warning and Danton’s response, we see the juxtaposition of the “cold defense” that Herman wishes for and the “boldness” of performance for which Danton is known, already a tacit acknowledgement by both parties that Danton’s great advantage in this disadvantageous situation is his magnetism and ability to ignite enthusiasm in the jury� This exchange is followed by more impassioned words and “ Wiederholte Zeichen von Beifall ” ( Werke 112)� Finally, just as Herman prevents him from speaking further after the ring- Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 41 ing of the bell, Danton declares his revolutionary accomplishments to “ Lauter Beifall ,” ending with: “Meine Stimme hat aus dem Golde der Aristokraten und Reichen dem Volke Waffen geschmiedet. Meine Stimme war der Orkan, welcher die Satelliten des Depotismus unter Wogen von Bajonetten begrub” ( Werke 112)� As in the speeches of Robespierre and St� Just prior to the trial before the National Convention, the various “applause” stage directions signal the momentum in Danton’s speech and his eventual persuasion of the jury-cum-audience� It is no coincidence that he emphasizes the power of his voice, the source of Herman’s concern� Likewise, it is no coincidence that Herman says, before closing the first session of the trial, “Danton, Ihre Stimme ist erschöpft, Sie sind zu heftig bewegt” ( Werke 112)� In Danton’s second appearance before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he begins his speech with: “Die Republik ist in Gefahr und er hat keine Instruktion! Wir appellieren an das Volk, meine Stimme ist noch stark genug um den Decemvirn die Leichenrede zu halten” ( Werke 120)� The reaction to Danton’s words again begins with “ Zeichen d. Beifalls ” ( Werke 120)� Having just changed the rules of the National Convention in order to prevent Danton from speaking further before the jury, however, members of the Committee of Public Safety enter the Revolutionary Tribunal and command: “Ruhe im Namen der Republik, Achtung dem Gesetz” ( Werke 120)� They rightly fear that Danton might win over the crowd and put the stacked jury, who are tasked with the solemn duty of upholding justice in the new Republic, in danger of succumbing to the performance of a skilled actor� Danton does not remain silent and appeals to the public directly: “Ich frage die Anwesenden, ob wir dem Tribunal, dem Volke oder dem Nationalkonvent Hohn gesprochen haben? ” to which “ VIELE STIMMEN ” of the audience shout: “Nein! Nein! ” ( Werke 120)� Before Danton is led away by force, he declares: “Wie lange sollen die Fußstapfen der Freiheit Gräber sein? Ihr wollt Brod und sie werfen Euch Köpfe hin� Ihr durstet und sie machen euch das Blut von den Stufen der Guillotine lecken” ( Werke 121)� These words cause “ Heftige Bewegung unter den Zuhörern, Geschrei des Beifalls ,” and the many voices chant: “Es lebe Danton, nieder mit den Decemvirn! ” as Danton is led forcefully away ( Werke 121)� In both defense speeches before the Tribunal, Danton, through his skills as an orator, is able to sway the jury to his side� They react to his words as one would to a performance-with applause� Büchner depicts this process of persuasion with the same pattern of stage directions as the scene depicting Robespierre and St� Just addressing their audience, the National Convention, in which the reactions to the National Convention speech progress from “applause,” to “loud applause,” to the singing of the Marseillaise, whereas the reactions to Danton’s second speech begin with “signs of applause” and end with “shouts of applause” and the chant “Long live Danton! ” The applause in 42 Sophia Clark the stage directions forms a comparative link between the great orators of the Revolution, and between the two institutions, one where applause is expected and the other where is it not� Büchner’s interpretation of the Revolutionary Tribunal acknowledges explicitly the trial’s theatricality through its citation of historical audience reaction- albeit as an enhanced reaction for literary effect. Büchner’s historical sources for these scenes mention crowd reactions, such as “approving murmurs” and “moved his judges to the suggestion,” but do not specify applause in the way that is employed here ( Werke 494). Applause is mentioned specifically in certain sources, as Yann Robert (128) points out in his study of theater in the French Revolution, to which we will return later� Yet Büchner’s repeated “applause” stage direction lends literary convention to the interpretation of an historical event in order to make clear that Danton’s defense is a performance that relies on theatricality for success rather than on sound legal evidence-whatever that might be against an otherwise wanton accusation; that the Revolutionary Tribunal is in fact a public stage and its actions theater, both because Danton makes it so and because the Jacobins orchestrate it as a show trial; and that the jury is the audience of said theater� If Büchner’s “applause” stage direction is a somewhat indirect historical reference, we might also ask a fundamental question of the text: in what courtroom does one give and expect applause? In contrast to Büchner’s depiction of the National Convention, we might have expected at a theoretical level the scene of the Revolutionary Tribunal to take a different form, including differing stage directions, since one is a space for public oratory whilst the other a court of law� This is, of course, not the case� Surprisingly, though, the “applause” stage directions are not necessarily mirrored in the Revolutionary Tribunal on account of Danton’s trial being a show trial-which it certainly is� Instead, I argue that the applause is Büchner’s contribution to the interpretation of this historical moment and judicial situation: that of negotiating the requirements of radical legal reform in a new republic-reform, such as public, oral trial by jury, that manifested outwardly in the French Revolution as tools of tyranny during the Terror� Paradoxically, if the Jacobins had had their way, there would have never been a show trial to begin with� They would have preferred a non-public trial procedure without any speeches at all, as Herman confirms with his fear that Danton will sway the crowd; indeed, something more akin to an inquisitional investigation and judgment made behind closed doors as was common to historical pre-revolutionary trial procedure� The Jacobins themselves fear the publicness of their own show trial� It is this anxiety surrounding reform that Büchner cites in his Revolutionary Tribunal scenes, and this is an anxiety that is Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 43 informed by larger legal historical conversations about reform of trial procedure in France and Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries� Considering that Büchner wrote his play in the revolutionary moment of the early 1830s, it would make sense to situate Dantons Tod , specifically the “applause,” within the contemporary legal reform debates of the early nineteenth century in Germany-debates which, having roots in Antiquity, still owed a great deal to the outgoing eighteenth century for both its moments of triumph and of failure� Dantons Tod would seem to conform to the recent assessment of the French Revolution by Yann Robert, who argues in his 2019 book Dramatic Justice that French revolutionary actors understood the actual courtroom as theater and intentionally imitated and utilized it as such� Just a few years earlier before the Revolution, however, the French courts of law, like those in the German Territorial States, functioned mainly through non-public, paper-based trial procedure and, in the case of criminal trials, the inquisition system� 3 Contentious debates over judicial reform in both France and Germany focused on the issue of “text vs spoken word,” with reformers pushing “for public, oral debate in which all parties are present for an adversarial trial” (Robert 147—48)� This position stood in stark contrast to the usual practice of experts deciding the outcome of a case behind closed doors or criminal inquisitional trials in which judges acted as both investigators and prosecutors� In the German states, the spectacle of justice was generally reserved for the Gerichtstag , during which the verdict of the trial would be read aloud to the public, or during the sentencing phase when the trial itself had already been concluded� Public punishment, especially execution, was already ritualized theater that was meant to reaffirm the authority of the prince and his state as the keepers of law, order, and justice on earth (van Dülmen 273—74)� Absolutist governments facing reform opposed opening up the stage of justice to all parties, specifically regarding the trial phase before a verdict and sentence had been reached� The reform principles of publicness, orality, trials by jury, accusatorial trials, and the separation of the judiciary from the state administration were already heavily discussed in France in the late eighteenth century, far more than in Germany according to Alexander Ignor (212—13), and consequently, many translations of French essays on law reform were published in Germany in the 1770s and 1780s� In the world of judicial reform in Germany, all eyes were on the unfolding French Revolution and new French Republic, from the declaration of publicness of criminal trials in 1789 by the French National Assembly to the introduction of the jury in April 1790 (Ignor 211)� This was followed by a more detailed implementation of trial by jury and institution of the public prosecutor in September 1791 (cf� Ignor 211)� An argument in favor of public criminal trial 44 Sophia Clark proceedings for a new revolutionary justice was that the scrutinizing eye of the public would prevent judicial errors and abuses and would thus participate directly in a trial as a “check” to the judiciary, thus ensuring good, citizen-led outcomes in the new Republic (Robert 144)� However, as Robert notes, “many politically liberal thinkers expressed a profound anxiety that their own ideals, transferred to the courtroom, would bring about an overly dramatic mode of justice” (Robert 12), in that either the prosecution or defense could pander to the public for support through a good performance rather than attempt to win a case through legitimate legal means� Robert argues that while early revolutionaries envisioned trials as public performances, the Jacobins later attempted through the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal to “de-theatricalize justice” (Robert 18)� Only two years after the National Assembly declared that trials were public, silence and stillness were imposed on spectators (Robert 144), thus negating one of the original ideas behind citizen participation of French Republican justice� At stake was the liberal desire to “open all institutions to greater public supervision and democratic participation,” yet there remained a distinct fear that the institution of justice would lose its legitimacy as a mere theatrical spectacle (Robert 19)� With their patent preoccupation with the questions of representation and theater, the Jacobins pursued in vain, as Robert puts it, “a theater-proof performance of justice” (18)� Here, the question of what form of justice best upholds the principles of a republic is a critical one, whether that be direct public participation in a theater-like setting or an observing public that resists the lure of performance� Either way, public, oral trial by jury was the official procedure that stood in the laws of the French Republic� In Büchner’s play, however, the Revolutionary Tribunal is still in a state of exception, one in which there is mistrust of the public, and one that is thus far from the ideal courtroom of the envisioned Republic. In the lead-up to Danton’s first appearance before the Tribunal, the supporters of Robespierre discuss stacking the jury with members who are either unreliable or are supporters of Robespierre� They also change the rules of the Revolutionary Tribunal through the National Convention in Act 3, Scene 6 so that the Girondins cannot speak before the Tribunal if their defense speeches become too heated, since they suspect that Danton’s great skill as an orator will again sway the jury in his favor� Thus, the Jacobins work to undermine the very trial procedure that their new Republic guarantees� Indeed, as heads continue to roll, it is clear that the Jacobins have no intention of true reform until all their enemies have been purged� Robespierre declares to the applause of the National Convention: “Wir haben nur wenige Köpfe zu treffen und das Vaterland ist gerettet” ( Werke 103), implying that the Revolution is not yet over, and in the same scene, St� Just’s call for the people to participate in the perpet- Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 45 ual killing of the tyrant, to act as Brutus against Caesar in perpetuity ( Werke 105)� Thus, Hérault’s statement in Act 1 of the play that “[d]ie Revolution ist in das Stadium der Reorganisation gelangt� Die Revolution muß aufhören und die Republik muß anfangen” ( Werke 71) proves prophetic: Robespierre’s revolution is threatened by the very idea of an impending Republic� Callot, reassuring St� Just that Danton will be unable to speak before the Tribunal after new rule changes, states that “[d]ie Lava der Revolution fließt” ( Werke 116). Here, the Jacobins cling to the Revolution. The Revolution’s flouting of newly established legal principles must continue indefinitely; the Republic remains moored on the horizon� Danton’s warning, then, in his second defense that “[d]ie Republik ist in Gefahr” comes too late ( Werke 120)� The French Republic has been declared on paper but, on the stage of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Republic was never complete� Here, Büchner cites the very real historical apprehension of the Jacobins about the Revolution’s own legal principles of publicness, orality, and trial by jury, leaving the audience of Dantons Tod with an unavoidable conclusion: the actual principles of the Republic that leaders of the French people have proclaimed through revolution must necessarily oppose the exceptional and bloody state of the current unending and unsustainable Revolutionary Tribunal� If direct, living history staged a second time is the aesthetic principle guiding Büchner’s drama of revolution, he succeeded in making the fear of the court of law becoming theater alive a second time, and in an historical moment in which this fear was still pervasive� During Büchner’s time, the legal reform ideas of publicness, orality, and trial by jury were gaining traction in the German Territorial States, not least on account of the legacy of the French Revolution as well as despite this very fact� Alexander Ignor (233) argues that the actual reform programs of the nineteenth century in the German states were, from the side of legal theory, rather detached from the French model of justice that emerged during the Revolution and then were reborn under Napoleon� This might seem surprising, since French-occupied German states were compelled to adopt or at least begin the process of integrating the various Napoleonic codes from the first decade of the nineteenth century, including oftentimes drastically different reformed trial procedures, such as an investigation process from the 1808 Code d'instruction criminelle that included a public and oral main trial with a jury and public prosecutor (cf� Ignor 214)� The Napoleonic model states on the left bank of the Rhine River completed this adoption, yet most of the other states were still in the process of drafting new law codes based upon the Napoleonic ones when Bonaparte’s empire fell apart� Karl Härter concludes that “[a]fter the Confederation of the Rhine disintegrated in 1814, all attempts to transfer or adopt 46 Sophia Clark the Code pénal into German criminal law were terminated as inappropriate to German legal culture” (68), as well as being fraught with too many difficulties. In one fell swoop, the (forced) unifying project of adopting French law was no more� However, debates on the principles of orality, publicness, and trial by jury raged on, both independent of and in reference to the French system� The general concerns surrounding reform in Germany were hardly different in 1835 than they were in 1789. The major difference between 1789 and 1835 was the volume of literature authored by German jurists that had, in the meantime, been published on the subjects of publicness, orality, and trial by jury� The reform discourse had been elevated, and the period from the beginning of the nineteenth century into the 1840s saw an explosion of book titles with the keywords “Öffentlichkeit” and “Mündlichkeit,” and, to a lesser extent, “Geschworenengericht�” Both sides of any particular debate defended their positions furiously, though some concepts were more acceptable than others� Certainly, publicness and orality were often bundled together, and publicness was perhaps, of the three, the least controversial of the reform concepts� The jurist Paul Johann Anselm Feuerbach, for example, argues in his influential 1821 volume Betrachtungen über die Oeffentlichkeit und Mündlichkeit der Gerechtigkeitspflege that there are benefits of publicness and openness in trial procedure, not least that being present in front of one’s judges combined with the pressure of public opinion will act as a check against judicial corruption (Feuerbach, Gerechtigkeitspflege 113)� This argument is somewhat similar to what the actors of the early French Revolution saw as an advantage of public, oral trials, albeit without the direct participation of the public� However, the Revolutionary Tribunal was indeed a trial by jury, and Ignor argues that this fact “hat dazu beigetragen, daß man in Deutschland der Idee der Geschworenengerichte und der Idee einer öffentlichen und mündlichen Gerichtsverhandlung vielerorts und lange Zeit skeptisch gegenüberstand” (214)-though, as should be self-evident, this is certainly more the case for trial by jury than the principle of public, oral trial procedure without trial by jury� Despite the hesitation of officials across the German Territorial States, there was one area within Germany that did implement this trial form successfully: the Confederation of the Rhine during Napoleonic occupation (1806—1813)� In fact, once the Rhine territories became part of Prussia, these areas kept their French reforms, favoring them over Prussian law (cf� Ignor 215)� In 1816, Karl August von Hardenberg led a Prussian commission to the Rhine to report on the legal circumstance there and came to the conclusion that the area should keep its current system, stating that “es enthält nahezu alle Vorteile, die vorher und nachher für das Anklageprinzip und die öffentliche und mündliche Hauptverhandlung ins Feld geführt und später von den Gesetzgebern über- Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 47 nommen wurden […]� Das gleiche gilt für das Gutachten der Kommission über die Geschworenengerichte” (quoted from Ignor 215—16)� Though the Rhine territories more or less kept their French reforms, this did not extend to Prussia� Trial by jury was a major sticking point, especially for the influential jurists Feuerbach and Karl Josef Anton Mittermaier, both of whom rejected the French model for Germany while also acknowledging that trial by jury could be a positive institution as implemented by other nations (cf� Härter 62; Ignor 216)� Additionally, Ignor states that a further hurdle for trial by jury was that the fierce controversy surrounding it gave trial by jury the appearance of a “politische Einrichtung,” thus raising suspicions about the motives of its supporters and detracting from its legitimacy (249)� He cites Jagemann, who comments in 1843 that trial by jury “sei ein durch und durch demokratisches Element” that the German governments would naturally want to avoid (cf� Ignor 250)� Contemporary revolutionaries contributed to the further politicization of trial by jury by demanding it specifically in, for example, documents that were circulating in French and German human rights societies� 4 For Feuerbach, trial by jury was the cornerstone of the constitutional republican state; however, he did not believe that mere structural change to trial procedure could guarantee freedoms or by itself sustain a truly republican form of government in the German territories (cf� Feuerbach, Erklärung 15, 22)� As a reformer, Feuerbach emphatically supported publicness and the combination of orality with the written word but, like many others, had doubts about pure orality and trial by jury� For example, in a pamphlet published in 1819 titled Erklärung des Präsidenten von Feuerbach über seine, angeblich geänderte Ueberzeugung in Ansehung der Geschwornen-Gerichte , Feuerbach inserts an anecdote from the Ancient Greek historian, Diodorus of Sicily, who comments on Egyptian justice, outlining their distrust of the oral trial: Auf diese Art [referring to written trials] pflegen die Aegypter alle Gerichte zu halten, weil sie glauben, daß durch den mündlichen Vortrag der Advocaten viel Dunkelheit über das Recht verbreitet werde� Denn durch die Künste der Redner, durch das Blendwerk der Gebehrden, und die Thränen der in Gefahr schwebenden, würden viele verleitet, von der gehörigen Strenge der Gesetze, und von den Grundsätzen der Wahrheit abzuweichen� Und oft sehe man, daß die geübtesten Richter, entweder weil sie hintergangen worden, oder weil die sich einnehmen lassen, oder vom Mitleid bewogen, durch die Macht der Rede fortgegriffen würden. Hingegen glaubten sie, die Urtheile würden gründlicher und richtiger gesprochen, wenn die Parteien ihre gegenseitigen Gerechtsame schriftlich darlegten, und man nun die Sache in ihrer wahren Gestalt sehe� Denn auf diese Art könnten weder die Genies den Langsamen, noch die Lügner und Dummdreisten den Wahrhaftigen und Bescheidenen den Vor- 48 Sophia Clark theil abgewinnen: sondern allen würde gleiches Recht widerfahren, wenn die Parteien durch die Gesetze Zeit genug hätten, einer des andern Schriften zu untersuchen, und die Richter, beide gegeneinander zu halten, und hiernach zu urtheilen� (Feuerbach, Erklärung 28—29) In this passage, Diodorus describes the susceptibility of people, including judges, to the art of performance (the arts of the orator, the illusion of gestures, the tears of those who are in danger)� The anxiety expressed by Diodorus’ Egyptians has its source in the inherent theatricality of the oral trial� It acknowledges that the orator (the lawyer) and the accused will engage in a performance before the court (which is a stage), and performances will obscure the truth and give advantage to acting and manipulation over fact� The fear expressed in this passage is that the court might actually become theater� It also posits that text-based trial procedure naturally pursues truth while performance-based oral trials will necessarily cause deviation from the truth� Feuerbach does not cite Diodorus to advance a direct theoretical or rational argument against trial by jury� He leaves the anecdote at the end of his essay without an explanation, presenting it perhaps as a warning� Through citation, Feuerbach discloses an anxiety about the theatricality of the court of law that could easily be transferred to trial by jury, the actual subject of the pamphlet� If Diodorus is already concerned about educated judges being swayed rather by sympathy or a good performance than material evidence or reason-based argument, the danger in having a group of lay people sit as judges is compounded� Feuerbach and other influential jurists did not recommend public oral trial by jury for the German states. On this point, however, Gideon Stiening clarifies that the major pushes for legal reform, for an independent judiciary, adversarial trials, publicness over secrecy, the integration of orality, and presence of all parties during a trial, came overwhelmingly from those working within the legal field in the territorial state governments, Feuerbach included (Stiening 35). Still, despite the enthusiasm for reform coming from the judiciary, the specter of fear that surrounded the transition to public, oral trials-not to mention trial by jury- persisted. The reasons are many, foremost being the difficulty of transitioning to an entirely new system of justice that was quite the opposite culturally from the textand expert-based inquisition system. The prospect of having juries filled with jurors who were not experts in law was a daunting one for those jurors who believed that the scientific rationality of the inquisition did in fact lead to the discovery of truth� It was also the symbolism of public, oral trial by jury, as Feuerbach argues, that pitted revolutionary against skeptic, which constituted more of an ideological than practical hurdle� Its association with theatricality and the bloody theater of the French Revolution is difficult to overlook. Büchner, Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 49 whether or not he was reflecting on his own project of revolution, depicted this association as undeniable through his escalation of “applause” stage directions in the Revolutionary Tribunal scenes of Dantons Tod � In Dantons Tod , the conflict between the “cold defense” and “boldness” of performance precisely depicts the perceived challenges of integrating publicness, orality, and trial by jury into the trial procedure outlined above� Herman, who attempts to persuade Danton to give a calm, quiet defense, is concerned, as Diodorus is, that the jury-audience will succumb to Danton’s performance rather than judge the actual matter at hand: the charge of conspiracy� Danton, on the other hand, rejects the cold defense in favor of his skill as an orator, as it is the best and only tool he has to defend himself in this Jacobin-engineered trial� For Diodorus, justice and truth are under threat by orality and the capriciousness of emotion; for the Jacobins, it is the continuing Revolution� In fact, however, the Revolutionary Tribunal scenes in Dantons Tod reveal that justice in the Republic was never threatened by an affective performance before the jury; justice was under threat because the Tribunal was rigged from the start� Büchner’s project in Dantons Tod was to make his historic subject alive a second time through dramatic poetry using the practice of historical citation and quotation. He quoted speeches verbatim, included specific and forgotten historical details, and cited larger issues within the French Revolution without much elaboration� One of many conversations that was revived in Dantons Tod through the play’s stage directions were the anxious debates surrounding legal reform in a time that was still negotiating these ideas� He wrote Dantons Tod in the political atmosphere of the 1830s in which one camp believed that textbased justice, such as the inquisition process, maintained both order and legal accuracy in the pursuit of truth, while the revolutionary camp believed that publicness, orality, and juries would result in more just outcomes and were necessary principles for justice in a free republic� That being said, both sides remained suspicious of performance and theatricality in the courtroom� What Büchner emphasizes with Dantons Tod , however, is an understanding that justice is theatrical and performance-based� The question is no longer whether justice is theater but rather: who controls the theater of the courtroom, who is allowed to participate, and to what extent? Büchner’s play spoke to the present moment, as Germany was overdue for radical legal reform� In the revolution of 1848 a little over a decade after Büchner’s death, trials were guaranteed to be public and oral by Paragraph 45, Article 9 of the “Gesetz, betreffend die Grundrechte des deutschen Volks” of December 1848 authored by the Frankfurter Nationalversammlung � The same guarantees are found in Paragraph 178 of the Paulskirchen-Verfassung of 28 March 1849. Trial by jury was first introduced 50 Sophia Clark by the German Empire in 1877. And perhaps fulfilling the fearful portents of the past, public trials were used as a stage by political groups—not necessarily to win any particular verdict, as Henning Grunwald has shown of trials in the Weimar Republic, but rather to win political momentum among their followers� After its abolition in 1924, trial by jury, as it was imagined by revolutionaries, never returned to the German states� However, the hard-fought revolutionary concepts of publicness and orality persisted, and these values are enshrined in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany today� Notes 1 Vismann 38� My translation� 2 All Büchner quotes will be cited from the Münchner Ausgabe of Werke und Briefe as “Werke” and page numbers� 3 The common exception being summary trials ( summarische Verfahren ), which were short oral trials that would not last more than a day or two and could be decided by a local judge� The issues at hand were usually minor ones that did not require the legal expertise of higher courts� 4 Declaration of a jury in Article 9 of the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights (Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte) , originally drafted as the Déclaration des Principes Fondamentaux de la Société by the French Society of the Rights of Man and Citizen and first translated into German in 1834 by Charles-Antoine Teste in Paris (cf� Hauschild 333)� Works Cited Buckley, Matthew S� Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution in the Making of the Modern Drama � Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006� Büchner, Georg� Werke und Briefe. Münchner Ausgabe. Ed� Karl Pörnbacher, Gerhard Schaub, Hans-Joachim Simm and Edda Ziegler� 10th ed� Munich: DTV, 2004� Campe, Rüdiger� “Three Modes of Citation: Historical, Casuistic, and Literary Writing in Büchner�” The Germanic Review 89 (2014): 44—59� Dülmen, Richard van� Kultur und Alltag in der Frühen Neuzeit � Vol� 2� Dorf und Stadt � 3rd ed� München: C�H� Beck, 2005� Feuerbach, Paul Johann Anselm� Betrachtungen über die Oeffentlichkeit und Mündlichkeit der Gerechtigkeitspflege � Gießen: Georg Friedrich Heyer, 1821� ---� Erklärung des Präsidenten von Feuerbach über seine, angeblich geänderte Ueberzeugung in Ansehung der Geschwornen-Gerichte � Erlangen: J�J� Palm und Ernst Enke, 1819� Grunwald, Henning� Courtroom to Revolutionary Stage: Performance and Ideology in Weimar Political Trials � Oxford: Oxford UP 2012� Applause from the Jury: Büchner’s Dantons Tod 51 Härter, Karl. “The Influence of the Napoleonic Penal Code on the Development of Criminal Law in Germany: Juridical Discourses, Legal Transfer and Codification.” The Western Codification of Criminal Law. A Revision of the Myth of its Predominant French Influence � Ed� Aniceto Masferrer� Cham: Springer, 2018� 53—75� Hauschild, Jan-Christoph� Georg Büchner: Biographie � Stuttgart/ Weimar: J�B� Metzler, 1993� Ignor, Alexander� Geschichte des Strafprozesses in Deutschland 1532 - 1846. Von der Carolina Karls V. bis zu den Reformen des Vormärz � Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002� Robert, Yann� Dramatic Justice: Trial by Theater in the Age of the French Revolution � Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2019� Stiening, Gideon� “‘Man muß in socialen Dingen von einem absoluten Rechtsgrundsatz ausgehen’� Recht und Gesetz nach Büchner�” Commitment and Compassion: Essays on Georg Büchner. Festschrift for Gerhard P. Knapp � Ed� Patrick Fortmann and Martha B� Helfer� Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012� 21—45� Wagner, Martin� “Why Danton doesn’t die�” Georg Büchner: Contemporary Perspectives � Ed. Robert Gillett, Ernest Schonfield and Daniel Steuer. Leiden/ Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2017� 173—91� Vismann, Cornelia� Medien der Rechtsprechung � Ed� Alexandra Kemmerer and Markus Krajewski� Frankfurt am Main: S� Fischer, 2011�