She grew up in Vienna before emigrating in 1941, traveling through France and Spain and eventually to New York City.
Halpert left Germany right before the Nazis began transporting Jews in Berlin to concentration camps in Poland.
Her dissertation was titled "Hermann Hesse and Goethe, with particular reference to the relationship of Wilhelm Meister and Das Glasperlenspiel.
[3] In the early 1980s, the Columbia University German department lost its only two tenured professors, Joseph Padur Bauke and William Jackson, who had both recently died.
Halpert was the only senior faculty and helped the department rebuild itself and maintain a high level of scholarship.