Biography
Elsa Bassermann (born Elsa Sarah Schiff) was a German actress and screenwriter. She began her stage career around 1902 at theatres in Breslau, Cologne and Berlin, and appeared in films from 1913, frequently with her husband Albert Bassermann. She wrote numerous screenplays under the pseudonym Hans Hennings.
Owing to her Jewish background, the couple left Nazi Germany in the 1930s and emigrated to the United States in 1939. There she took supporting roles in films including Escape (1940), Desperate Journey (1942) and Madame Curie (1943), in which she played Madame Perot. She later returned to Germany and died in Baden-Baden in 1961.
