Clara Schumann at the age of nine, Clara Wieck performed at the Leipzig home of Dr. Ernst Carus, director of the mental hospital at Colditz Castle. There, she met another gifted young pianist who had been invited to the musical evening, Robert Schumann, who was nine years older. Schumann admired Clara's playing so much that he asked permission from his mother to stop studying law, which had never interested him much, and take music lessons with Clara's father. While taking lessons, he rented a room in the Wieck household, staying about a year. He would sometimes dress up as a ghost and
Friedrich Wieck Marianne, were irreconcilable in large part due to Wieck’s unyielding nature. When his friend Adolph Bargiel, father of Woldemar Bargiel, had an affair with her, she divorced Wieck in 1824. She then married Adolph Bargiel. His second wife, Clementine Fechner – whom he married in 1828 – was twenty years his junior. Clementine was the sister of painter Eduard Clemens Fechner and of experimental psychology pioneer Gustav Fechner. One of the three children she gave birth to, besides Cäcilie and Clemens (1829–1833), who died at the age of four, Marie Wieck was also a concert pianist, although she was not