Clara Faisst

Clara Faisst was born in 1872 in Karlsruhe, in south-west Germany, the youngest of six children. Her father was a Protestant pastor, and he died when she was one. Her mother came from Switzerland, and she made sure that Clara had a good education. Clara was often ill as a child. At seven she began lessons in harmony, and later she studied the piano at the music school in Karlsruhe. In the 1890s she went to the Royal Academy of Music in Berlin, where she studied composition with Max Bruch. At that time few women studied composition. Her own piano teacher there, Ernst Rudorff, had written some years before that women were not meant to learn composing. Her first songs were printed in 1894, while she was still a student. Viel tausend Blümlein auf der Au’ (Many Thousand Little Flowers in the Meadow) is one of them.

After her studies she toured Germany and Switzerland, playing her own music. Around 1900 she settled in Karlsruhe again, and she earned her living as a piano teacher. She also wrote poems, and she published three books of them.

When the First World War began in 1914, she wanted to help, so she joined the Red Cross. But her health was too weak for nursing, and knitting made her fingers sore. So she had to leave the Red Cross. In her diary she laughed at rich ladies who came to help in elegant dresses and only wanted to look after officers. She wrote that a poor woman who quietly knits socks for the soldiers “does much more, and nobody knows she does it.”

In her flat she had a music room with two grand pianos. Every four weeks she invited a small group of friends to hear music there. She played Bach and Beethoven and her own pieces, and she read her poems. She did this for many years, through both world wars. One of her friends was Albert Schweitzer, the doctor and organist who later won the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote that her music came from a strong and deep personality. She died in Karlsruhe in 1948, at 76, and she was soon forgotten.

In the early 1990s, someone walking through Karlsruhe saw a folder lying on a pile of rubbish in the street. It was full of her songs, photographs and poems. The folder was offered to the state library in Karlsruhe, which bought it. Without it, we would know almost nothing about her.

Clara Faisst never looked for fame. She made music for a small circle of friends in her own room, and she did it faithfully for decades. Her music almost ended up as rubbish, but today it is kept in a library and sung again.