| Born: | 07-17-1910 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Ida RUHRDÖRFER (married: HALPERN), born on July 17th, 1910 in Vienna, daughter of Hersch Meilech Ruhdörfer (manufacturer of silk ties) and his divorced wife Sabine Weinstock, with whom she lived in Vienna's 5th district, Kettenbrückengasse. After having graduated from secondary school for girls with an emphasis on philology and literature in 1929, she began to study at the Philosophical School of the University of Vienna. During her studies she met the chemist Georg Halpern and they married in November 1936. The couple moved to Milan/Italy and then returned to Vienna.
In 1938 Ida Halpern wasn't enrolled at the Philosophical School anymore, but was preparing for the final exams ('Rigorosen'). She registered for the final exams in Musicology on November 20th, 1937 and passed the first 'Rigorosum' on November 27th, 1937. She presented her dissertation 'Franz Schubert in der zeitgenössischen Kritik' on June 28th, 1938 which was accepted on June 30th, 1938, and she also passed the second 'Rigorosum' on July 2nd, 1938. She could finally finish her studies and graduate on July 21st, 1938, but only with the discriminating ceremony of a 'Nichtarierpromotion', which included at the same time that she was banned from her profession. Her parents were deported to Minsk in 1942, where they were murdered.
With the financial help of the Jewish refugee organisation HICEM the couple first emigrated to Shanghai in 1938, after their conversion to Christianity in 1939 to Vancouver/Kanada. Soon Ida Halpern worked as musician and music critic: She played piano for the Vancouver Jewish Congress, worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, from 1940 on for the University of British Columbia and as a music critic for the 'Vancouver News-Herald'. Besides she taught music at the university and privately, and German language, from 1941 on. In 1944 she received the Canadian citizenship.
Halpern joined the Women's Musical Club (president 1960-1962) and founded the Friends of Chamber Music in 1948, which she also headed as president and member of the program comittee. In 1958 she became director of the auditions of the Metropolitan Opera, she got involved with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Community Music School of Greater Vancouver (vice-chairman 1968-1972), had a program at the local radio 'Musical Mailbox' and wrote music critics for the 'Vancouver Province' until 1957.
Ida Halpern's professional work dealt intensively with folk music of the natives in Northern America (Kwakiutl, Nootka, Haida und Coast Salish). She war a pioneer of the first ethnomusicologist recordings - altogether she recorded and catalog about 500 songs. Her anthropological contributes to classify musical phenomenons in the context of human evolution were critisised, but her musicological fieldwork in Ethnomusicology and Comparative Musicologywere broadly recognised.
In 1966 Ida Halpern was the Canadian delegate to the International Folk Music Council in Ghana, and she was a guest lecturer at universities in Canada and the USA. She received research grants from the province of British Columbia in 1977 and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada in 1979. In 1978 Halpern was named a Member of the Order of Canada.
Ida Halpern died on February 7th, 1987, in Vancouver/Canada.
Her professional papers are held by the British Columbia Archives and Records Services in Victoria, and by the Simon Fraser University.
Lit.: Sybil AMBER, Ida Halpern — Music Never Lies, 2009; biografiA; David Gordon DUKE, Remembering Dr. Halpern, 2011; The Canadian Encyclopedia; KNIEFACZ/POSCH 2017a.
Katharina Kniefacz & Herbert Posch
