Chess Where I lived - Ep. 2: Germany. Where The Past Meets The Future

Hello dear readers,

Welcome to the second episode of the series "Chess Where I Lived". As planned, today is the day to tell you more about chess in Germany, a beautiful European country that was my home for about a year between 2015 and 2016. In case you don't know, I lived in the city of Wolfsburg, located in the north of the country. So, of course, my personal opinion at the end will not necessarily represent either the whole country or the perspective of every German, but since this is my blog, I will share my own point of view.

For those who haven't read the first episode, the idea is to initially give some information about the history of chess in each place and to mention some notable players along with some curious facts about them. After that, I also give a brief personal perspective on how I felt about the game's popularity and influence there. The texts are divided into five topics, which are:

• A historical player
• The GOAT
• My favorite
• A curious fact
• My personal perspective

With no more time to waste, let's get started!

1)      A historical player: Adolf Anderssen

Adolf Anderssen was born in Breslau on July 6, 1818. If you are not familiar with European history, this city is nowadays called Wroclaw, located in Poland. At the time, however, it was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, which is basically called Germany today. The story is obviously more complicated than that, but this is a chess blog, so please do your own research if you are curious. What is important is that, although the territory is now Polish, he is officially considered German.

Anderssen is generally regarded as having been the world's leading chess player from 1851 to 1858 and from 1862 to 1866 (this gap is thanks to the legendary Paul Morphy). The "title" was earned after representing Prussia at the first international chess tournament, held in London in 1851.  Anderssen won it by beating notable players of the time, such as Lionel Kieseritzky, József Szén, and the former best in the world, Howard Staunton.

Although the title of World Chess Champion did not yet exist, and most books regard Wilhelm Steinitz as the first true World Champion, Anderssen is generally mentioned in some lists and can be called an unofficial one. He is also considered by many to be the first "modern" chess master. During his career he was probably the most successful tournament player in Europe, winning over half the events he entered.

In 1866 he lost a very close match (6-0-8) to Steinitz, who succeeded him as world number one. However, Anderssen continued to dominate most of the tournaments, such as the Baden-Baden 1870, which can be considered one of the top 20 tournaments of all time in terms of the number of leading players present. Some of his strong opponents were Joseph Henry Blackburne, Louis Paulsen, and even his rival Wilhelm Steinitz himself.

His brilliant sacrificial attacking play is acclaimed to this day, particularly in the "Immortal Game" (1851) and the "Evergreen Game" (1852). He was undoubtedly an important figure in the development of chess, driving forward the transition from the "Old School" to the elegance and complexity of the modern game.

Anderssen died in his hometown on March 13, 1879, at the age of 60.

2)      The GOAT: Emanuel Lasker

Born on December 24, 1868, in Berlinchen (Little Berlin), Emanuel Lasker is undoubtedly the greatest German player of all time. Again, the town was in the Kingdom of Prussia and is now part of Poland under the name of Barlinek.

Besides being a great chess player, Lasker was also a mathematician and a philosopher. His reign as World Champion lasted 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest of any officially recognized champion in history. In his prime, he was perhaps the most dominant player of all time and is still generally regarded as one of the strongest players in history.

His title came after a match against Wilhelm Steinitz hosted in New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal in 1894. Steinitz was very confident and got shocked when Lasker beat him convincingly 10-4-5, becoming the second official World Champion. He confirmed his dominance by beating Steinitz even more convincingly in their rematch in 1896-97 (10-5-2).

Lasker defended his title in historic matches against legends like Frank James Marshall, Siegbert Tarrasch, Dawid Janowski, and Carl Schlechter, which involved crushing victories, polemics, and the famous pre-match trash-talking. His rivals used to say that Lasker had a "psychological" approach to the game, deliberately playing inferior moves to confuse the opponents. Recent analysis, however, suggests that he was in fact far ahead of his time and his contemporaries.

The tournament successes confirm this. Lasker won in St. Petersburg in 1895-96, ahead of Steinitz, Pillsbury and Chigorin. He also won in Nuremberg (1896), London (1899), Paris (1900), St. Petersburg (1909), and again in St. Petersburg (1914). In the latter, he finished ahead of rising stars José Raúl Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine, who would become the next two world champions.

The title was lost in a match against Capablanca in 1921. After four draws, he blundered in the fifth game with black. Losing later the tenth, eleventh, and fourteenth games, Lasker resigned the match. Many say he was in mysteriously poor form, but the former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik thought that Lasker played quite well, explaining that Capablanca was 20 years younger, a slightly stronger player, and had more recent competitive experience.

Lasker died in New York, USA on January 11, 1941, at the age of 72.

3)      My favorite: Vincent Keymer

Vincent Keymer was born in Mainz on November 15, 2004. He is the first player to appear here who was actually born in the country called Germany and in a city that belongs to its actual territory. His aptitude for chess was evident from an early age. When he was only ten, some media hailed him as the greatest German talent since Emanuel Lasker, impressing even the legendary Garry Kasparov. At the age of 11, he finished second in the Vienna Open tournament.

The International Master title was earned in July 2017, when he was just 12 years old. His coach, Peter Leko, claimed that he was "the world's most promising prodigy". A year later, in 2018, Keymer played in the A-group of the Grenke Chess Open. He won the tournament ahead of 49 Grandmasters, including four with ELO ratings above 2700, scoring 8/9 and achieving the first GM norm at the age of 13. His performance rating of 2798 was the highest ever achieved by an under-14 player.

With such a promising start to his career, it didn't take long for him to earn his Grandmaster title, which he did in October 2019, still at the age of 14. Perhaps his most impressive result since then was finishing runner-up to Magnus Carlsen in the 2022 World Rapid Chess Championship, so maybe we can say that he was the best of the mortal earthlings.

This was just a brief summary of his achievements so far, but I am sure there are many more great things to come, and I have no doubt that we will soon be seeing him in a Candidates Tournament, or maybe even in the World Championship Match. Of course, the competition will not be easy as he is one of so many young prodigies like Firouzja, Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Erigaisi, Abdusattorov, and the list goes on.

There is no particular reason why he is my favorite, but Germany is a country that has been close to my heart since I lived there. So, Keymer, the country's best representative and a player with an even brighter future, is someone who I follow closely and always root for him to do well in every tournament he competes.

4)      A curious fact: Emil Joseph Diemer and The Immortal Pawn Pushing Game

Emil Joseph Diemer was born on May 15, 1908, in Radolfzell, Baden-Württemberg. The story of his life is neither cool nor something to be applauded, on the contrary. In 1931 he joined the German Nazi Party and became an active member. He was present at all important international chess events and became the "chess reporter of the Greater German Reich". His articles appeared frequently in Nazi publications. So please note that he is not here because I like him as a person, as this is not at all the case.

After the war he continued his chess journalism, selling chess books and giving simuls, but the stigma of his Nazi past made it difficult to support himself in this way. As a middle-rated master, his successes in chess were few. In 1953 he was expelled from the German Chess Federation, whose officials he had accused, apparently without evidence, of "homosexuality and corruption of innocent youth".

Despite being a very questionable (to avoid saying something far worse) human being, Diemer is the protagonist of one of the most bizarre games in chess history, which many call the Immortal Pawns Game. It was played against Thomas Heiling during the Nuremberg Open in 1984. He simply played 17 consecutive pawn moves in the opening and still managed to win the game quite convincingly.

Of course, his opponent was not a world-class player, but he was rated 2000+ and could be considered strong for that time. Although I am sure that such a strange approach would have been crushed by Carlsen, Caruana, or any other top player (maybe he had a chance of a draw against Giri), it was still something that really caught my attention when I saw it for the first time, and I thought it would be interesting to share with my readers. Below is a link to a video of Agadmator analyzing it. 

“The Immortal Pawns Game - 17 Consecutive Pawn Moves by White”

Kids, don't try it at home against opponents of the same level. The chances of a huge rating drop are extremely high, but as most of us are amateurs and just here to have fun, you might as well give it a go.

5)      My personal perspective

I think every normal person in the world knows that chess in general cannot be considered a very popular sport, so it is no surprise that even in Germany it is far behind football or handball in terms of popularity. However, I feel that it is taken much more seriously there than in other countries I have lived in, like Brazil and New Zealand.

I am not going to say that it is super beloved and that I can talk to any work colleague about the game Carlsen played yesterday, it is not on such a level, but I think it can still be said that Germany is one of the most important chess countries, which has cultivated chess culture for about 1000 years. With over 2,300 clubs, almost 100,000 chess enthusiasts are actively involved. The country has more than 100 Grandmasters and some of the most important chess tournaments in the world.

Germany is also the second European country with more titled players and the second with more GMs, only behind Russia in both respects. Although different sources give different numbers, and it is likely to change quite regularly, the total number of Grandmasters in December 2023 seems to be 104. The exact number may vary depending on which nationality the player has in his passport and which federation he has chosen to represent, but the fact that it is hard to count is already evidence of the country's strength.

Its popularity has been growing in recent years, as it has everywhere else in the world. The latest survey shows that nearly 23% of Germany's 83 million people either play regularly or have played in the last 12 months, up from 19.9% in 2012. In addition, around 40% of the population know the rules and are able to play a game without making illegal moves.

If you have read this far, I would like to thank you for your attention and interest. I hope you have enjoyed reading it and learned more about chess in a country that undoubtedly plays a very important role in the history of our beloved game.

Postscript:

[For Germany, I have chosen to represent the country with a rook in the thumbnail. The reference is quite obvious and relates to the large number of medieval and modern castles that can be found and visited there. The picture above is my favorite, located in Heidelberg, but there are many other cool ones, such as Burg Eltz, Neuschwanstein, Burg Hohenzollern, and Schwerin Castle.

As also mentioned in the title of this text, Germany is a place where the past meets the future, not only in chess, with Lasker and Keymer, but also in everyday life in general, being a beautiful mixture of medieval history, whose traces can still be found in the cities, modern history of the XX century and the most advanced technology development of the present day.]