Communication with Clara Schumann: Zwickau museum relies on modern technology

The Robert Schumann House in Zwickau is relying on modern technology to bring even the composer's wife back to life. Next year, it will be possible to "telephone" Clara Schumann (1818-1896) in the new permanent exhibition, as the museum announced. Students from the West Saxon University of Applied Sciences in Zwickau have programmed a Clara Schumann AI and fed it with the pianist's almost 750 letters to her husband Robert and the composer Johannes Brahms.

For Clara's voice, they "cloned" a speaker from Leipzig at the appropriate age of around 70, they said. The "Fräulein vom Amt" will not be missing either, as dials or buttons did not yet exist on telephones at the time.

Clara Schumann's telephone number was 1037

According to the museum, Clara Schumann, who was already successful as a pianist under her maiden name Wieck, owned a telephone in her later apartment in Frankfurt am Main from 1890. She often used it to speak to her daughter Elise, for example. "The telephone numbers that Clara and her daughter had in Frankfurt are also known: Clara could be reached via 1037; if you preferred to speak to Elise, 844 was the number of choice."

One of the exhibits at the Zwickau Schumann House is a Siemens & Halske telephone from around 1895. The museum revealed that Clara Schumann was a close friend of the board member and managing director of the company's Vienna branch and enjoyed receiving advice from him on technical matters.

The Schumann House will be renovating its permanent exhibition from spring 2025. The house, where Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810, claims to have the world's largest collection of original documents relating to the composer.