The chapter presents a survey of the life and works of Richard Strauss's foremost librettist, the Austrian poet, playwright, and essayist Hugo von Hofmannsthal whose fame as a poetic genius began in his teenage years. His early poetry and poetic dramas established his reputation as the poet of aestheticism – an image he tried to shed all his life. A person of extraordinary sensitivity and erudition, he was drawn to Greek dramas, mythology, as well as folk and fairy tales which he tried to recreate for a modern audience. They offered him a framework for expressing social and ethical questions in a subtle, seemingly un-didactic fashion. In literary history, he is primarily noticed for his language skepticism (above all, his Letter of Lord Chandos); for the general public, his collaboration with Strauss is certainly the highpoint of his career (the operas Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra leading the list).