Nanette Falk-Auerbach (1835–1928)

Born in Hamburg, Nanette Falk was one of the few pupils who played to Clara Schumann in Dresden in 1847 at the age of twelve. Before long, she also moved in the circle of the Schumanns, similar to Emilie Steffens. It was apparently at the invitation of Clara that she went to Düsseldorf at the beginning of 1851 to participate in the performance of a concerto for three pianos by Bach, together with two other pupils, Martha von Sabinin (q.v.) and Karoline Dupré.

Nanette Falk gave concerts and taught almost all her life, first in Germany and from the 1860s also in the USA. In Baltimore in 1867, she married the watchmaker and later antiquarian bookseller and bibliographer Joseph Auerbach (1830-1904), originally from Danzig [now Gdańsk], whom she later followed to his home town. She survived her husband by more than twenty years and died at an old age in Danzig. The Robert Schumann House in Zwickau holds an extensive collection of concert programmes and reviews and an autograph album from the estate of Nanette Falk.

(J.M.N., translated by Th. H.)