When Büchner was three his family moved to Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse. In 1825 he matriculated at the Darmstädter Großherzogliches Gymnasium. This school, known as the "altes Pädagog" (Old Pedagogue), was one of the foremost educational institutions in the German-speaking countries. During his stay Büchner demonstrated outstanding intellectual potential, a tendency toward independent thinking, rebelliousness against authority, and an inchoate political awareness. A recurrent theme in his student essays and school speeches concerns the incontrovertible rights and dignity of the individual. In two of these pieces Büchner describes how heroic persons in history reacted when their moral autonomy was threatened by political oppression. His essays clearly exhibit an ethical as well as an implicitly political critique of the suppression of civil rights in Germany that had resulted from the mandates of the Deutscher Bund (German confederation), the loose confederation of thirty-nine German states set up by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
Büchner's writings at the gymnasium also disclose a fundamental repugnance toward Christian dogma. In opposition to the traditional Christian strictures against suicide, for example, Büchner argues in "Rede zur Vertheidigung des Kato von Utika" (In Defense of Cato of Utica) that suicide for the sake of preserving one's moral dignity is praiseworthy.
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