Paul Dessau
composer
Paul Dessau (1894–1979) was a German composer and conductor, famous for his collaboration with Bertolt Brecht.
After World War I he became conductor at the Kammerspiele Hamburg, and was répétiteur and later Kapellmeister at the Cologne Opera under Otto Klemperer between 1919 and 1923. In 1923 he became Kapellmeister at the Staatstheater Mainz and from 1925 Principal Kapellmeister at the Städtische Oper Berlin under Bruno Walter.
In 1933 Dessau emigrated to France, and 1939 moved further to the United States,[1] where initially he lived in New York before moving to Hollywood in 1943 (Hennenberg 2001). Dessau returned to Germany with his second wife, the writer Elisabeth Hauptmann, and settled in East Berlin in 1948.