ABSTRACT
The story of the nineteenth-century German theatre in its more material aspects has never been fully told. Structurally speaking, the keynote of the German stage throughout the century was one of only slightly modified conservatism. The dominating principle was that of the old peep-show or picture-frame stage, generally known in the eighteenth century also as Illusionsbühne, since it adequately answered the requirements of dramatic illusion as understood at that time. The Fundus of the average German theatre in the earlier part of the century used to comprise: one state chamber, one street, one prison, one wood, and several ordinary rooms which answered such general descriptions as ‘geweisste Stube’, ‘Dachzimmer’, ‘grünes Holzzimmer’ or ‘Bauernstube’. A radical innovation was the introduction, by Lautenschläger in 1898, also in Munich, of a revolving stage modelled on that of the Japanese popular theatre of the eighteenth century.
