Helga de la Motte-Haber

Born in 1938 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, de la Motte-Haber trained in psychology at the University of Mainz under Albert Wellek before pivoting to musicology. Carl Dahlhaus brought her to the Technische Universität Berlin in 1968, where she was appointed professor of systematic musicology in 1978 and held the position until her retirement in 2005. In 1983 she co-founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Musikpsychologie alongside Klaus-Ernst Behne and Günter Kleinen, and her Handbuch der Musikpsychologie (1985) became a landmark reference in the field. Her more than 300 publications established music psychology as a recognised sub-discipline of systematic musicology.