Ida Marie Lipsius

Ida Marie Lipsius (30 December 1837 in Leipzig – 2 March 1927 in Schmölen), alias La Mara, was a German writer and music historian.

During the ending 19th and starting 20th century, she played an influential role in the German music business, especially at the grand-ducal Weimarian court and in the Richard Wagner circle at Bayreuth.

An intimate friend to Liszt's long-time life partner, the princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, she was distinguished with the title of professor in honor of her eightieth birthday in 1917.

Besides several early written travel sketches, under her alias "La Mara", Marie published a lot of musician biographies, concerning dead as well as contemporaries of hers, which, beginning from 1867, first were printed in the Westermanns Monatshefte before being edited in the then popular series Musikalische Studienköpfe (Musical study portraits) by the house Breitkopf & Härtel.

Marie Lipsius was the first musicologist to conduct systematic research to identify Beethoven's mysterious "Immortal Beloved": In 1909, she published Therese Brunsvik's Memoirs, and she interpreted her glowing admiration of the composer as a secret love.