Elisabeth Hauptmann

Elisabeth Hauptmann (20 June 1897, Peckelsheim, Westphalia, German Empire – 20 April 1973, East Berlin) was a German writer who worked with fellow German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht.

She got to know Brecht in 1922, the same year she came to Berlin. She worked as a secretary for the German-American poet and writer Herman George Scheffauer. She began collaborating with Brecht in 1924, and is listed as co-author of The Threepenny Opera (1928). She purportedly wrote the majority of the text as well as providing a German translation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, on which the musical play is based, as working material for Brecht and Kurt Weill, the composer. She reportedly wrote at least half of the Mahagonny-Songspiel, but was not credited.