The Schumanns - Robert and Clara

Robert and Clara Schumann - A Love Story

(c) By Agnes Selby, Guest Writer-Friend

Clara Schumann, nee Wieck, was a composer whose work has only recently become appreciated by audiences the world over. She was a dutiful daughter, a mother of eight children, a loyal friend and a loving wife. But first and foremost she was a concert pianist - 1,299 programs are preserved in the Robert Schumann house in Zwickau which encompass the years from the time of her debut at the age of nine to her last concert in Frankfurt when she was 71 years old.

Born on September 13th, 1819, to Friedrich Wieck and his wife Marianne, she was destined at birth by her father’s will to become a “Wunderkind.” By the age of five she could already perform ‘dances’ and spent hours practicing exercises. At about this time, Clara’s mother, tired of Wieck’s relentless daily sarcastic criticism, chose to leave Wieck and return to her own parent’s home thereby leaving Clara and her three brothers in the care of their father. The trauma resulting from this abandonment by her mother caused Clara to quite literally lose her faculty of speech, which she did not regain until she was reunited with her mother during the summer of 1825.

Heinrich Goebel and his Light Bulb

The Incandescent Light Bulb of Göbel (or Goebel)

It is likely that when we talk light bulb we think Thomas Alva Edison, often attributed as its inventor. Today it is an accepted fact that Heinrich Goebel built functional bulbs three decades earlier. Many others also contributed to the development of a practical device for the production of electrically generated lighting.

Inventor Heinrich Göbel, later Henry Goebel (April 20, 1818 – December 4, 1893), was a precision mechanic born in Springe, Germany. In 1848, he emigrated to New York City and lived there until his death in December 4, 1893. He changed his nationality in 1865.

Anthony Fokker and Aviation

Aviation Dateline: April 6

Aircraft Designer /Aviator Anthony Fokker

Anton Herman Gerard "Anthony" Fokker (6 April 1890 – 23 December 1939) was a pioneer in aviation and a Dutch aircraft manufacturer. He was born in Blitar, East Java, Netherlands Indies (now Indonesia). Fokker was educated in the Netherlands. In 1912, he founded the Fokker aircraft works in Germany, which designed and built the Fokker biplanes and triplanes used by Germany in WWI.

When Fokker was twenty-years old he started an aviation company in Wiesbaden, Germany. His first aircraft, Spin I, made a couple of 100 yard flights at the beginning of December, 1910. Later that month it crashed into a tree, destroyed. His second aircraft, Spin II, also crashed in May, 1911. However, Spin III, his third, was more successful. Two years later, it was purchased by the German military authorities.

On the outbreak of the First World War, he began work on a new single-seater fighter plane.  After the war, he set up factories in Holland. He moved to the United States in 1922 and established the Fokker Aircraft Corporation.

Source:

Anthony Fokker.  Accessed April 6, 2011