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 reviewed in the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung". Spurred on by a favorable comment from von Weber, he left his position as a tutor and established himself in Leipzig as a piano teacher and in the business of renting and selling pianos and other musical instruments and keeping a music lending library, which Richard Wagner was known to use. Marriage was considered by Wieck as a means to improve his status, which he did by marrying Marianne Tromlitz. Tromlitz was a famous singer in Leipzig at the time. She taught the more advanced piano students of Wieck. As an accomplished singer, Marianne