The Enlightenment was premised on the clarity of reason and a rejection of the mysticism of the Baroque, and Neoclassical architecture was premised on a return to the clarity of the rules of Classical architecture. As it can be found in Classical architecture, the contradiction between form and function can be found in Neoclassical architecture, especially in the popular concept of architecture as theater or stage set, the best example being the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841). The early introduction of iron into masonry construction also created a contradiction between form and function, as in the iron reinforcement concealed in Jacques-Germain Soufflot’s Panthéon (1756-97) in Paris. The trabeated façade of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Schauspielhaus (1818-21, Figure 4.1) in Berlin has no relation to the structure of the building. The façade of the building is a stage set, and the form of the architecture contradicts the function of the architecture in relation to the structure of the building. As will be seen, the same contradiction can be found in the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the German tradition, and the necessity of the contradiction between form and function in architecture can be found in German idealist philosophy, in particular in the writings of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). The treatment of Schinkel’s Schauspielhaus consists of a system of vertical pilasters and horizontal entablatures, forming bands of windows in a reticulated grid which turns the façade into a screen which unites the varied building masses behind it. The façade presents a harmonious ordered system which expresses the higher aspirations of the theater arts which take place inside the building rather than the architectural functions of the building. The design scheme is loosely based on a Classical precedent, perhaps illustrations of the choragic monument of Thryssalos in Athens in the Antiquities of Athens, but it is transformed into an original composition of harmonic relationships achieved in a tectonic order rather than through ornamentation. Schinkel himself wrote: “The beauty of a building does not lie primarily in the ornament employed, but rather first and foremost in the choice of relationships” (Bergdoll 1994: 64).