Erich Engel and Bertolt Brecht co-directed Brecht's drama Mother Courage and Her Children from November 1948 to January 1949 in Berlin. Helene Weigel took the lead role. Paul Dessau composed the music, also in collaboration with Brecht. The premiere took place at the Deutsches Theater on 11 January 1949. Brecht, Dessau and Weigel had just returned from exile. Erich Engel, who had been released from UFA in 1933, had remained in Germany and had made entertainment films.

Brecht had written Mother Courage and Her Children in Sweden in 1939, shortly after the beginning of World War II. The premiere took place in 1941 with Therese Giehse in the lead role at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. This production, too, was a success, although Brecht had little influence over it from Finland. His Mother Courage, who lost three children through her war-time business deals, was intended to stimulate thought rather than arouse pity. Brecht had the Berlin production (which also attracted criticism) fully documented as a Courage model which would then serve as a mandatory template for all other performances. However, Brecht conceded they it should serve "merely as a provisional basis, to be studied and corrected." (ed. trans.; Brecht, Wie Erich Engel das Modell benutzt. Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 391.) The casting of Helene Weigel and the other actors in Mother Courage saw the start of the history of the Berliner Ensemble (BE). In 1954 it received its own venue, the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, where the premiere of The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Kurt Weill had been held in 1928. Here, too, Erich Engel was the director.