German marionette showmen. Josef Schütz and Johann Georg Dreher hailed from old puppeteer families. It is thought that Schütz died after 1826 and Dreher in 1806. Besides Johann Georg Geisselbrecht, Schütz and Dreher are considered the best company directors of their time.
Although they travelled and worked together only for a short time, their names were linked ever after their guest performances in Berlin in 1803-1804. Their productions impressed members of the literary circles in Berlin, who discovered numerous surviving vestiges of itinerant theatres of the 17th century in their repertoire. Notes of Dr. Faust taken by students during performances remain only as fragments. Dreher and Schütz were the first to introduce Kasper (Kasperl) as a comic character of puppet theatre in northern Germany.
(See Germany, Itinerant Troupes, Travelling Puppeteers.)