It is against this background of the theater's high prestige as a forum for ideas, as the summit of the literary arts, as the place where all the arts coalesce in a Wagnerian 'Gesamtkunstwerk' or dialectically oppose and ironize each other in Brechtian epic 'alienation, ' of the drama as a method of thought, of concrete philosophizing, that the astounding wealth of critical and theoretical writings about drama and theater that the German-speaking world has produced over the last two hundred and fifty years must be seen and appreciated.>.