To the non-specialist the concept of German Romantic drama is immediately problematic. Might the absence of these works on the Spielplan of the German speaking stage seem like a judgement of history? Can one substitute other criteria than performability as criteria? Or, more bluntly: what justification can there be for the attention of 13 leading experts in Romantic scholarship to be focussed so intensely on this esoteric theme and the results enshrined in a book amounting to almost 300 pages? Even among students of German literature there will be many who are likely to be sceptical and who will be looking for answers to such questions.