Chess Stronghold Leipzig
Chess Stronghold Leipzig
October 31, 1946
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| Newspaper | Leipzig Newspaper |
|---|---|
| Date | Thursday, October 31, 1946 |
| Author | E.K. |
| Occasion | Master Tournament November 3–17, 1946 |
| Type | Historical Overview |
Mieses in the Article
"Particularly great successes were achieved by Mieses, who in the year 1907 won first prize in the great tournament in Vienna with strong competition and in the same year took second to third place in Ostend. The now 81-year-old lives in London and intends to take part in a Leipzig tournament in the course of next year."
Two notes: the event meant is the 1st Trebitsch Memorial of the Vienna Chess Club in January 1907, which Mieses won. At Ostend he shared 3rd/4th place with Nimzowitsch, not 2nd or 3rd. Whether he actually played in Leipzig in 1947 is not documented.
The article traces Leipzig's significant role in German chess history:
Milestones
- 1848: Founding of the Chess Society "Augustea"
- 1877: Founding of the German Chess Federation in Leipzig
- 1877, 1879, 1894: Major chess congresses
- 1920–1933: Chess activities in "Café Merkur"
Famous Guests of "Augustea"
- Adolf Anderssen – a frequent guest; in 1876 and 1877 he played Paulsen in Leipzig, losing both times
- Louis Paulsen – winner of the 1877 congress
- Emanuel Lasker – 1890 as young "chess phenomenon"
- Siegbert Tarrasch
Great Chess Players from Leipzig
The article names several important chess players who came from Leipzig or worked there:
The article appeared only eighteen months after the end of the war. It mentions the persecution — in wording that jars today: “In 1933 chess life in Leipzig went into steep decline through the infantile Jewish boycott of the Nazis” („durch den infantilen Judenboykott der Nazis"). The writer calls the boycott childish, not criminal.
Of those affected he writes: “Well-known players such as Dr Kaiser, Dr Blumberg, Gotthelf, Fajarowicz, Mundstück left Germany in the course of the Nazi regime, and to this day nobody knows whether they are still alive or where they are.”
For Sammi Fajarowicz this is not true
Fajarowicz had not left Leipzig — he never got out. Attempts to escape to France in 1938 and to Luxembourg in 1939/40 each ended in his expulsion. He died on 4 July 1940 in the Jewish Hospital in Leipzig of tuberculosis, aged 32. By the time this article appeared he had been dead for six years — a few kilometres from the newspaper's own offices. The passage is kept here as a document of its time: it shows how little was known in Leipzig in 1946 about the fate of its own neighbours.
On the post-war years the article describes the rebuilding of chess in Leipzig, begun by Fritz Woog and, after his death, continued by Walter Schurig, head of the chess section at the Leipzig adult education office.