Elisabeth Hauptmann was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 writer who worked with Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

.

She got to know Brecht in 1922, the same year she came to Berlin. She began collaborating with him in 1924, and is listed as a co-author of The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...

(1928). She is purported to have composed the majority of the text as well as providing a German translation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, upon which the play is based, as working material for Brecht and Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

, the composer. She also wrote at least half of The Mahagonny Songspiel, although she is uncredited. She was the main text author of the musical comedy Happy End

Happy End (musical)

Happy End is a surrealistic three-act musical comedy by Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Bertolt Brecht which first opened in Berlin at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on September 2, 1929. It closed after seven performances...

(1929). She was in exile

Exile

Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 from 1934 to 1949; she married Paul Dessau

Paul Dessau

Paul Dessau was a German composer and conductor.- Biography :Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family...

 in 1943. After Brecht's death in 1956, she published works of his at the Suhrkamp Verlag

Suhrkamp Verlag

Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature.In January 2010 the headquarters of the company moved from Frankfurt to Berlin.-Early history:...

, a German publishing house, and worked as a dramaturg for the Berlin Ensemble. In 1977, a collection of her works was published under the name Julia ohne Romeo (Julia without Romeo).

In 1961, she received the Lessing Award, which the Ministry for Culture of East Germany awarded every year.