The English version of the collected works of Georg Buchner has this to say about "Danton's Death":

The powerful theatricality which a modern audience may recognise is all the more suprising, since there is no evidence at all that Buchner was a theatre-goer or had any real conception of how a play was staged. Furthermore, he wrote the play not from any deep love of the theatre, but in a feverish rush, in five weeks and under constant threat of arrest, because he was desperately short of cash. Possibly it was this very naivety and haste that lent such freshness to his approach.

Well, that english was from an Amazon preview. I am reading "Dantons Tod" as a piece in his Werke Und Briefe. Its a small German hardback (pub 1968) that I have owned since 1992 as part of a small collection of German books a friend gave me back then.