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
Michael Wieck capital of East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is the son of two Königsberg musicians who were widely known before the Nazi era, Kurt Wieck and Hedwig Wieck-Hulisch. They were founders of the popular "Königsberger Streichquartett" (Königsberg String Quartet). After consultation with a local rabbi, his Jewish mother and his nominally Protestant, but in religious matters indifferent, father decided to bring up their children, Michael and his sister, Miriam (born 1925), as Jews and enrolled them with the Jewish congregation in Königsberg. According to Jewish religious law a person born from a Jewish mother is Jewish by birth. This differs