She worked as a secretary for the German-American poet and writer Herman George Scheffauer.
[1] She began collaborating with Brecht in 1924, and is listed as co-author of The Threepenny Opera (1928).
She purportedly[2] 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.
[citation needed] Because of the rise of Nazism, Hauptmann went into exile in the United States from 1934 to 1949, marrying German composer and conductor Paul Dessau in 1943.
She made a German version of He hanshan (The Confronted undershirt), a Yuan Dynasty-era Chinese play.