Applause from the Jury: Publicness, Orality, Trial by Jury, and the Revolutionary Tribunal in Büchner’s Dantons Tod.

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? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]