When Karl Fried­rich Schin­kel fi­nally rea­li­zed his long-held wish to de­sign stage sets in 1815 under the new Di­rec­tor Ge­ne­ral of the Royal Thea­tres in Ber­lin, Karl Count of Brühl, this in­tro­du­ced a new epoch in the field of stage de­sign. It opened with the twelve sets for Mozart's Magic Flute. These are still li­ving mas­ter­pie­ces in which two ge­ni­u­ses who are re­la­ted by na­ture meet. The aim of Schinkel's ef­forts was to create a com­pre­hen­si­vely edu­ca­tio­nal Ge­samt­kunst­werk. The de­signs for Mozart's opera were fol­lo­wed by set­tings from stage works by Gluck, Schil­ler and Kleist, and also some by aut­hors who are now less well known or for­got­ten. Schinkel's suc­cess crea­ted a de­sire for re­pro­duc­tions of his most be­au­ti­ful de­signs. They ap­peared as co­lou­red aqua­tint et­chings by ex­cel­lent Ber­lin en­gra­vers from 1819 to 1824 in five vo­lu­mes, a total of 30 sheets, to which two more were added in a se­cond edi­tion pro­du­ced from 1847 to 1849. Two fur­ther edi­ti­ons were pro­du­ced in 1861 and in 1874, which pro­ves the con­ti­nuing po­pu­la­rity of the works. One con­se­quence of the re­pro­duc­tions was that Schinkel's ideas spread bey­ond the con­fi­nes of Ber­lin.
The textual com­men­tary ex­ami­nes Schinkel's re­la­ti­ons­hip with the stage, which chan­ged in the course of his life, the his­tory of the emer­gence of the re­pro­du­ced works and the stra­te­gies pur­sued by his pu­blis­her Lud­wig Wil­helm Wit­tich. Count Bühl's pre­faces to the first and last vo­lu­mes are im­portant do­cu­ments in Berlin's thea­tri­cal his­tory. A ca­ta­lo­gue pro­vi­des ex­pla­na­ti­ons about how the de­signs were used, on con­tem­porary jud­ge­ments of them and on their ar­tis­tic si­gni­fi­cance.