Robert Schumann Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. His teacher, Friedrich Wieck, a German pianist, had assured Schumann that Robert could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. In 1840, after a long and acrimonious legal battle with Wieck, who opposed the marriage, Schumann married Wieck's daughter
Michael Wieck from the Nazi racist categories of half-, quarter- or smaller fractions of Jewishness. Following promulgation of the 1935 anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, Wieck and his sister were categorized, not as Mischlinge (mixed race), but as "Geltungsjuden" ("persons considered to be Jewish"), who in some cases were spared from the Holocaust. After Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933 the Wiecks experienced the gradual ramping-up of anti-Semitic discrimination and oppression. First they were ejected from public schools and sent to Jewish schools. Later they were later forbidden to attend classes at all. In 1938 Miriam was sent to a boarding school