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 violinist in the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Stuttgart. In his memoir, Wieck muses on human nature and speculates on ultimate causes and the nature of the deity. Although he retains a strong emotional attachment to Judaism, he ultimately espouses a kind of deism, alluding to "a definite feeling of something 'lying behind it all' that always resists being put into words." Regarding human nature and humankind’s potential for good and evil, he says: In 2005, Wieck was awarded the Otto Hirsch Medaille – an annual honor given to persons who have served the cause of German-Jewish reconciliation. The award is