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Serendipity

Born three months before her brother?

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By Vysotsky
Ingrid Haebler with a boy dressed like young Mozart and a yellow-red tulip named after her (Keukenhof, 1966)

In the 1960s and 1970s Austrian pianist Ingrid Haebler was arguably one of the best performers of the piano works of Mozart. After a concert at Hunter College in 1976, The New York Times wrote about her “peculiar blend of geniality and warm sentiment”. That review, by Donal Henahan, started with this line: “Ingrid Haebler is regarded by many people, including many Viennese, as the quintessential Viennese pianist.” Henahan was right. Haebler’s respectable and quiet style was less favoured in the 1980s (as too “prim and proper”), though music lovers in Japan and elsewhere kept adoring her. Haebler was asked by Denon Records to record all of Mozart's piano sonatas. Haebler still performed in the 1990s, when she was in her sixties.

Born in 1929?

In October 2008 someone started an unreferenced short but nice Wikipedia article about Ingrid Haebler. Of course Mozart, Bach and Beethoven were mentioned. The article even included a line about the cycle of recordings by Haebler later falsely attributed to Joyce Hatto and published under her name by Hatto's husband, William Barrington-Coupe. Ingrid Habler's date of birth was given as 20 June 1929.

No, born in 1926?

In 2010 another contributor came along, and changed the birth year from 1929 to 1926, with a reference to a German source. ("Ingrid Haebler zum 65. Geburtstag (20. Juni 1991)"). The Oxford Dictionary of Music (2013) also took Haebler to be born "Vienna, 1926". One of the best German newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, congratulated Ingrid Habler on her 90th birthday on 20 June 2016.

An authority control template was added to the article in 2012. This template lists several recognized authorities such as national libraries who give data such as preferred spellings of a person's name, and their birth dates. We can consult these sources now, but we can't say what they said back in 2012. In the meantime, the English language Wikipedia changed the date of birth to 1929, before changing it back to 1926 (in March 2017) and finally turning again to 1929 in August 2019, with a new reference.

Not born three months before her brother

So what is the truth? Was Haebler born in 1926 or in 1929? All of the fuss could have easily been prevented, if the Wikipedia community had listened better to an early contributor to the German language Wikipedia, who argued that 1926 was wrong and 1929 was the correct year of birth of Ingrid Haebler. In October 2008 Gerhard Kiefl argued at the talk page of the German Wiki article: "her brother Hilmar Haebler was born on 27 September 1926, from the same mother ... if that isn’t convincing, what is?" (my translation). Instead of checking this, people pointed to some wrong old sources, and consequently didn't want to change the (wrong) birth year 1926 to (the correct year) 1929.

The authority control VIAF lists Ingrid Haebler's birth year as 1929 in 12 references, and as 1926 in 3 references. Another authority control OCLC's WorldCat simply lists the birth year as 1929.

If "alternative facts" find their way to the real world, Wikipedians should be aware of the problem of circular referencing and different ways of resolving these apparent contradictions.

All’s well that ends well

Ingrid Haebler has given her life to music and Mozart, and in 2021 reached the respectable age of 92.

P.S. Shortly after this piece was published I received an e-mail from "the boy dressed like young Mozart" (now a man in his 60s). He still has vivid memories of that day back in 1966. He visited several concerts given by Ingrid Haebler later on- the last one in Concertgebouw Amsterdam, 2003. He lives in a street named after Mozart, and works in the flower bulb industry.

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Pointing out a biological improbability may be one of the few exceptions, together with simple mathematical calculations, that can be used in this way. In most cases, we need to avoid original research and insist that Wikipedia is a tertiary source summarizing what other, mostly secondary, sources say. The requirement of verifiability and the rejection of original research are important measures to prevent the publication of misinformation in most cases, and to resolve conflicts about which statements are "correct". You'll always be able to find examples for factual errors copied from other sources to Wikipedia, but that's just caused by the way Wikipedia is designed to work. While Wikipedia makes no guarantee of validity, its approach usually works nicely. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:23, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Oxford Dictionary of Music also has an online edition, but it's still not corrected there either. The entry starts "Haebler, Ingrid (b Vienna, 1926) Austrian pianist. Début Salzburg 1937. Salzburg Fest. début 1954. Won Munich and Geneva int. comps. 1954", which exacerbates the error, considering that it makes quite a difference whether you debut at the Salzburg Festival at age 15 or 18.

On the other hand, the New Grove (also published by Oxford University Press) seems to state 1929, like Wikipedia. Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:45, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Editors can be very obstinate sometimes over making changes when a source used is itself in error. But the error ending up getting fixed so all is well. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:55, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This seems to be a case of editors following rules rather than common sense, something that seems to be severely lacking in many people who consider themselves qualified to write an encyclopedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:49, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Appealing to common sense is simple, yet pretty subjective and thus meaningless. Your "common sense" is probably perfectly fine; I'd argue mine is as well. Sadly, that isn't always the case, and even we may disagree, so we have policies (like WP:V and WP:OR) to deal with cases of conflicting "common sense"s. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 02:57, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that anyone's common sense includes knowledge that it is extremely unlikely for siblings to have been born a few months apart. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:37, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:RULES covers this completely "Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense." Note the "always". Always always means "always". The same point is made at WP:BURO. Both are policies. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:56, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ambiguous birth dates are surprisingly common, it can be for a lot of reasons. -- GreenC 05:31, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think there's much surprising about it. Reasons include vanity, which is very common especially in the performing arts, simply not knowing the circumstances of one's own birth, which applies to many orphans, and lying about one's age in order to gain legal rights, which can occur either way depending on whether one wants to be treated as an adult or a child. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:37, 30 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    See Bob Kane for example, who said he was an adult to sign a contract to get paid for Batman, then later said he had been underage to get a better contract when Batman was successful. Argento Surfer (talk) 16:42, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm pretty sure that many Wikipedians don't understand where reports of a person's birthdate come from, or at least the don't use common sense when they see a reported birthday. Most reported birthdates come from the person themselves. Some folks - say an heir to the crown - don't have a chance to lie about their birthday. Others might have a difficult time lying, e.g me - my parents published a birth announcement soon after I was born in the local paper. But seriously - who is going to look that up, or even know it existed? I don't think most states give out birth certificates to just anybody who asks - though it might be easier than you'd think to get one if you know the birthplace (and lie a bit). Courts might require a birth certificate or other proof of age in certain cases. A lot of people will "lock themselves in" when they apply for their 1st drivers licence. But how many people do you show your drivers license to? If journalists want to know somebody's birthday, they'll usually do exactly what you would do - just ask the person. If they think something is fishy they might try to double check - but this might come down to checking a self-reported birth year in an autobio. At best a journalist on the street might say something like "Can I see your drivers licence - I just want to be sure of the spelling." So sooner or later most reported birth dates are self-reported, though it gets fairly difficult to lie as you get older. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:25, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    There will probably be less ambiguity over ages in the U.S. now that a social security number (based on birth certificate) is required for parents to claim a tax exemption/earned income tax credit/child tax credit. I think this was phased in between 1987 and 1992. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:09, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]


Will note that it would have been viable if the UK Old Style calendar had been in use (so today would have been 3 January 2021/2).

I have come across a few other calendar anomalies on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Jackiespeel (talk) 20:28, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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