Woyzeck
A poor soldier, exploited by his captain and used as a guinea pig by a doctor, murders his unfaithful lover. Buchner died at twenty-three and left it unfinished; the fragments were published decades later. It's the first working-class tragedy in European theater and reads like it could have been written yesterday. Alban Berg turned it into the opera Wozzeck.
Büchner died mid-draft, and what you are reading is an editor's bet: the surviving manuscripts don't agree on scene order, on the ending, or on whether Woyzeck drowns. Every edition is a different play. The fragments are electric, but assigning this text a stable greatness means crediting a century of editors as co-authors. A short play, assembled by committee.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
