Mannheim Live

     In 1939 the International Team Tournament in Buenos Aires (now called the 8th Chess Olympiad) was affected by the onset of WWII.  While the United States and Hungary weren't participating due to financial and other constraints, once Germany invaded Poland three members of the British team set immediately for home, Palestine refused to play Germany and games between France and Germany weren't played but set as draws.  The tournament, however crippled, did finish.

   The strong tournament at Baden-Baden, originally scheduled for June of 1869 was fatefully rescheduled for July of 1870. With tensions high and war between France and Prussia impending, Baden-Baden, a vacation spot for the wealthy, was considered relatively secure.  Even so, the schedules and scopes of events were drastically reduced on the side of caution.  The tournament started on July 18 and war was declared the following day.  One of the ten contestants, Adolf Stern of Mannheim, was a member of the Bavarian Army Reserve and had to leave for military duty after only having played four games.  After the tournament, Steinitz, Cecil de Vere and J.H. Blackburne were detained briefly by German soldiers who suspected they might be French spies. As they played, the contestants could hear signs  of the war being fought in the surrounding towns such as  Wörth am Rhein and Weissenbugh but the tournament itself, though not as splendid as envisioned, was completed.

    I do love when things swirl around like dust and, finding connections in a confluence of time and space, settle in a gestalt of intrigue.

   A short time ago I was reading an article by super-blogger, simagenfan  entitled, "Vladimir Makogonov. Some Games and Photographs."  I'm not overly familiar with V. Makogonov, but a dozen years ago I fashioned a webpage covering the 1945 USSR-USA Radio Match.  In this famous event, 10 players from each nation were matched up for two games, one with White, one with Black. Makogonov was matched with Abraham Kupchik.  I mentioned on simagenfan's blog that I put online the annotations of these two games that had been published in Chess Review.  Another notable chess blogger, kamalakanta, responded that he was unfamiliar with Kupchik - which is understandable since Kupchik only played out of the US on two occasions and was more of a local legend.  My intention became to create an article on Kupchik for which I've already started researching. 

    Now, at exactly the same time, a chess.com member, aflfooty, contacted me for information about the 1914 Mannheim tournament.   (a short depiction of the tournament can be read HERE). 

     My knowledge about that tournament is sketchy at best, but after some thought, I had an idea.

     This was the third chess tournament affected by the onset of a war.  In the above two introductory examples, the tournaments were completed.  Mannheim, a very grand affair consisting of many different tournaments, however, ended abruptly after the 11th round of the Master tournament.  You may have noticed that Adolf Stern, the only player at Baden-Baden in 1870 directly affected by the Franco-Prussian War was from Mannheim.

     My idea was that, since this tournament was interrupted by the war-to-end-all-wars, it might be fun, or at least curious, to look at newspaper coverage from the outside (i.e. the United States) to see how they viewed the unfolding war/chess story.  

     In the very first newspaper article I looked at, whose name should appear but that of Abraham Kupchik. 

     from the N.Y. Sun, May 5, 1914

     Neither Kupchik nor Chajes (both very strong New York players) ended up going. The Omaha Daily Bee, July 5, 1914 tells us why

     Let the games begin!!
(Washington D.C. Evening Star, July 21, 1914)

     For a chess tournament, the coverage was quite good in the secular press. At this point in time, the Star had no Chess editor, so these were found mainly on the Sports pages.  Here is the Star's July 23 insert followed by that of July 25 and July 28:

     Given the shocking events of that time, it's surprising to see that the Star (August 2, 1914) gave space to how the war might affect a chess tournament:

(The "Dr. Lasker's nephew" referred to in the title was really his 3rd cousin, Edward Lasker, who would be emigrating to the United States shortly after this article appeared)

     The N.Y. Tribune that same day, August 2, had a more positive outlook:

     The Omaha Daily Bee, August 16, 1914, announced the termination and results of the tournament.

     The N.Y. Sun, August 28, 1914, shared the grim prospects for chess during the war as well as Frank Marshall's difficulties getting home

     The Washington Sunday Star, September 6, 1914, does the same:

     Finally, the N.Y. Sun, September 20, 1914, talks a little about the imprisonments of some of the participants.

     As a bonus, here is the description of Frank Marshall's return trip, published in Hermann Helm's American Chess Bulletin, September 1914: