Friedrich Kalkbrenner seriously intended to become Kalkbrenner's pupil, but he changed his mind after this encounter with the celebrated man: Clara Schumann, wife of composer Robert Schumann, and herself an eminent pianist and composer, spent several months in Paris during the year 1839. She met many of the Parisian pianists, Kalkbrenner among them. In a letter home to her father, piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck, she wrote: German poet and satirist Heinrich Heine in his "Letters on Music from Paris (1840–47)" wrote with biting wit on musical life and musicians in the French capital. Kalkbrenner was the target of some of Heine’s more
Michael Wieck in Kaliningrad – as the city was renamed on in July 1946 – occupy the second half of his book. In 1949, the Wiecks finally were allowed to go to the Soviet Zone of occupation in truncated and divided Germany. Wieck left the Soviet zone as soon as possible and lived first in West Berlin, where "Gentile" paternal relatives had survived. Thereafter he lived for seven years in New Zealand, before returning to Germany and settling in Stuttgart. After his return, Wieck, an accomplished violinist, became first concert master of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and in 1974-93 was also first