Albert Ludwig Sigesmund Neisser
Neisser was born in the Silesian town of Schweidnitz (now Świdnica, in Poland), the son of a well-known Jewish physician, Dr. Moritz Neisser. After he completed the elementary school in Münsterberg, Neisser enrolled in the St. Maria Magdalena School in Breslau (now Wrocław, in Poland). In this school, he was a contemporary of another great name in the history of medicine, Paul Ehrlich. He obtained the Abitur in 1872.
Nancy Weir
Weir was born in Kew, Melbourne, on 13 July 1915. Her father was a publican who ran a small hotel in Lockhart, near Wagga Wagga, and she grew up "behind the bar". She studied piano in Melbourne with Edward Goll (a pupil of Emil von Sauer and grand-pupil of Franz Liszt) and Ada Corder (Freeman). She was renowned as a child prodigy, performing to great acclaim. A review of her concert performance in December 1929 noted, "With all her latent power, and natural gift for artistic expression, Nancy played Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, the work in which she exhibited her rare talent at the Town Hall some time ago. The unaffected simplicity of the child's playing, coupled with a sure grasp of the expressive and pictorial possibilities of the Scenes, constituted the charm of her renditions; The audience expressed the highest pleasure in Nancy Weir's clever playing and phenomenal success." At age 13, she performed Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, under the English-born conductor Fritz Hart. Following this concert, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne set up a public subscription scheme for the young Weir to study with a great teacher in Europe. On arrival in Berlin, Germany, in 1930, she studied first with Edwin Fischer, but wangled her own way to studying with the legendary Artur Schnabel who she said was more fashionable. However, the "official" story is that Schnabel heard her and agreed to take her on as a student immediately. After the Nazis came to power, Schnabel left Germany in 1933, and so did Weir.