Карл Эмиль Францоз: Австрийский писатель и редактор Бюхнера

Austrian writer

Karl Emil Franzos (25 October 184828 January 1904) was a popular Austrian novelist of the late 19th century. His works, both reportage and fiction, concentrate on the multi ethnic corner of Galicia, Podolia and Bukovina, now largely in western Ukraine, where the Habsburg and Russian empires met. This area became so closely associated with his name that one critic called it "Franzos country". A number of his books were translated into English, and Gladstone is said to have been among his admirers.

Franzos is also well known for being the first to publish an edition of Georg Büchner's work, which was vital for the rediscovery of the Vormärz author. Franzos completed his edition in 1879, including plays like Danton's Death and Leonce and Lena. The manuscript of Büchner's drama Woyzeck was difficult to decipher, and had to be treated with chemicals in order to bring the ink up to the surface of the paper, and many of the pages were kept and later destroyed by Büchner's widow, who survived him by four decades. But Franzos's edition was for many years the authoritative version, until the late 1910s when a revival of Büchner's works began in Europe and the many errors in Franzos' edition came to light. These errors include the misspelling of the title, as "Wozzeck" instead of "Woyzeck", an alternate ending that involves Wozzeck drowning in lieu of Büchner's incomplete manuscript, and a fragmented plot without connections between the scenes. Although the play is often performed in newer versions, Franzos' edition has been immortalized in the form of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, which uses the Franzos edition as its base.