Vincenz Grimm

Vincenz Grimm (illustration from 1850)

Vincenz Grimm (born March 15, 1801 in Vienna , † January 15 or 16, 1872 in Pest ; Hungarian Grimm Vince ) was an Austro-Hungarian art dealer, lithographer , cartographer , painter and chess player. In the course of the revolution of 1848/49 , Grimm took on a management position at the Hungarian banknote printing company . When the country's independence was violently suppressed, he had to flee and lived as an emigrant in Turkey .

His baptism was registered under the Latinized first name Vincentius Ignatius Leopoldus (Vincenz Ignaz Leopold). In the sources, the first name is sometimes given as Vinzenz or Vincze , the English translation is Vincent .

Art dealer and lithographer

Vincenz Grimm, who came from Vienna, led an eventful and remarkable life, the details of which, however, are only known in outline. In the literature there are incomplete and sometimes contradicting information about him.

What training he received is just as unclear as his precise origin. In any case, Grimm moved from Vienna to Pest in 1823, where he first worked as an educator. He later worked as a clerk at the Danube-Tisza Canal Company. Grimm opened a flourishing art and music shop in 1831 . On February 3, 1839, Grimm was one of the founders of the Pest Art Association . Versatile artistically, Grimm, who was also mentioned as a pianist , used to paint in addition to the art trade. His pictures are traded on the international art market to the present day . Works by him can also be found in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery .

In 1843 he founded a book printer or a lithographic printing company and in return sold his art dealership (Grimm continued to run an existing music publisher). He was now primarily interested in color lithographic printing , which at that time was still in the technical development stage. Ultimately, Grimm is said to have lost a considerable fortune in the course of this risky investment.

Grimm's most important chess activity also fell into this phase. Along with József Szén and Johann Löwenthal, he was a member of the often mentioned "triumvirate", which won two correspondence games for the Pest Chess Club between 1843 and 1845 against a team of leading Paris chess masters led by Pierre Saint-Amant . At the end of the 1840s, the Pest Chess Club had its headquarters in a building called "Wurmhof" in a private apartment on the same floor as the apartment of the lawyer and later revolutionary leader Ludwig Kossuth .

Hungarian revolution

10 forint note with the signatures of Kossuth and Szemeres (July 1849)

In August 1848 Kossuth became finance minister of the first Hungarian government (soon afterwards also prime minister ). He was in personal contact with members of the chess club and drew Grimm into government circles. During the upheavals of the Hungarian Revolution that followed , Grimm acted as head of lithography at the state banknote printing plant. In particular, he designed "the clichés for the famous Kossuth notes", which the state printing office soon printed en masse. With the invasion of Austrian troops and the proclamation of independence in April 1849, events came to a dangerous head. For Grimm, personal existence was at stake.

As head of banknote printing, he had felt compelled to move with the Hungarian government to Debrecen with his printing presses . In August 1849, the revolutionaries around Kossuth, who last held the superior position of " Reichsverweser ", had to submit to the military defeat. Prime Minister Bertalan Szemere decided to withhold the Hungarian crown insignia, including the St. Stephen's Crown, that they had taken with them on the run . They were buried near the border town of Orșova (now in Romania ) . According to the Szemeres report, Grimm was chosen as a draftsman to record the geographic location of the place and thus one of the few witnesses of this historical episode. This proves that Grimm had a relationship of trust with the leadership of the independence uprising. The crown insignia was only found again by the Austrian authorities after a persistent search in 1853.

There is other evidence of Grimm's political involvement. In a pamphlet in verse form published anonymously in Pest in 1849 , he bitterly commented on the suppression of the revolution in Hungary and the role played by the Austrian general and Ban of Croatia, Joseph Jelačić . The “hero poem in four songs” was published the following year in Leipzig in an extended 72-page version. The subsequently added “fifth song” ends with the lines: This is Jellachich's song ... All that's missing is the journey into hell, which is saved for the hero until the song ends.

Exile in Turkey and return

Historical view of Aleppo

After the failure of the revolution, Grimm escaped with a number of refugees, including Kossuth, across the border into the Ottoman Empire . The government in Constantinople offered asylum and refused to hand over the emigrants to Austria . Many of them, including Kossuth and Szemere, soon moved on to other host countries. Grimm, on the other hand, decided to start a new life in exile in Turkey after his rescue . Here he benefited from his often-mentioned talent for languages.

In Turkey, Grimm initially got by playing chess. He is said to have converted to Islam later and adopted the name Mustapha Bey . Soon Ottoman authorities became aware of his skills as a draftsman. For almost two decades he worked as a senior officer at the Cartographic Office of the Ottoman General Staff in Aleppo in what is now Syria . Apparently, after a few years, his activity allowed him to move to the capital, Constantinople. Here he was employed at the map and portfolio archive of the Turkish army. He may also have been called in because of his specialist knowledge of the manufacture of Ottoman banknotes. He lived in a hotel room in the European district of Pera , where he also worked as a private tutor.

Grimm did not return to Pest until 1868 after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise . Whether he was really only allowed to see Hungary again at this point in time or whether friends first had to persuade the “ proscribed ” to obtain official permission from the government - the information also varies. After his arrival he was soon made honorary chairman of the Pest Chess Club and took part in the dinner that celebrated Ignaz Kolisch's triumph at the international Paris tournament in 1867.

After his return home, Grimm lived in Königstrasse with his sister Paula, a famous actress. Grimm died of heart failure on January 15 or 16, 1872 and is buried in the Kerepesi cemetery (there is no information about the reported conversion to Islam in this context). The reports, which differ from this version, that Grimm instead returned from Pest to Turkey and died there, do not apply.

Significance for chess

Vincenz Grimm
chess newspaper 1851

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

Checkmate in four moves
Solution:
1. Ng8 – h6 Kg7xh6 2. Ne7 – f5 + Kh6 – g5 3. Rd5 – d7 h7 – h6 4. Rd7 – g7 mate

The memory of Grimm is preserved primarily in chess history. The reason for this is above all his participation in the competition against Paris, which brought the Pest "Triumvirate" and the Hungarian chess a great prestige success. The revolution of 1848/49 then brought an end to this brief period of prosperity. In addition to Grimm, Löwenthal also emigrated , who after a detour via America finally found a new place of work in London and was able to make a living from chess there.

As far as Grimm's chess achievements are concerned, again only a few reports are certain. His playing strength was considerable, but as a master he did not quite come close to his comrades-in-arms according to Löwenthal: "The strength ratio between Grimms and Szén was about 3: 7, to Löwenthal like 4: 6." Participation in long-distance games - only three of his games have come down to us, including two against Tassilo von Heydebrand and Lasa , who played a series of games with Grimm in Vienna in 1846.

The external circumstances in particular prevented Grimm from participating in the first international chess tournament , which took place on the fringes of the London World's Fair , in 1851 together with Szén and Löwenthal . Grimm's letter of rejection, dated February 27, 1851, was printed in the tournament book edited by Howard Staunton . In it he writes that his role during the Hungarian Revolution almost cost him his head.

The letter was accompanied by an article on the game of chess in Aleppo, which appeared in the chess magazine Chess Player's Chronicle . He was inspired by the fact that Aleppo was the hometown of the Syrian chess master Philipp Stamma in the 18th century . However, Grimm found that Stamma's memory had faded, and his search for Arabic chess manuscripts was also unsuccessful. In 1865 Grimm published another essay on the subject in the "Schachzeitung" . Based on games he had played in Damascus and Aleppo, Grimm described the Arabic rules that differed in several points from the usual ones in Europe. Pawns could only move one square from the starting position, the conversion could only take place in already captured pieces, and castling was either unknown or was carried out according to locally different rules. He emphasized the fast pace of the game and described that the players were allowed to pull several times in a row in the opening until both sides had completed their deployment. The games also mostly took place with lively participation from viewers.

In his exile in Turkey he had no equal opponents. Therefore, Grimm was limited to working as a chess teacher. He also devoted himself to chess composition and was able to keep in touch with European chess friends with tasks that were published in chess journals.

A variant of the king's bishop's gambit is named after Vincenz Grimm , which is named after the moves 1. e2 – e4 e7 – e5 2. f2 – f4 e5xf4 3. Bf1 – c4 Qd8 – h4 + 4. Ke1 – f1 g7 – g5 5. Nb1 – c3 Bf8 – g7 6. d2 – d4 d7 – d6 7. e4 – e5.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Baptismal register St. Stephan Vienna, tom. 1/103 fol. 79. Matricula, accessed July 23, 2019 . 
2. ↑ József Hajtun: Magyar sakktörténet 1. Verlag Sport, Budapest 1975, ISBN 963-253-239-2 , Hajtun: pp. 78-82
3. ↑ Cf. for example the paintings Two Hermits in their Hermitage (1827) and Young Woman with Her Sleeping Daughter (1868)
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Ludwig Bachmann : From bygone times. Pictures from the history of the development of the practical game of chess. 2 volumes. Berlin 1920-1922 (Volume 2: pp. 305-307).
5. ↑ The iron printing block (cliché) for this banknote is shown here .
6. ↑ Kálmán Benda and Erik Fügedi: A thousand years of the Stephanskrone , p. 186ff. (Budapest 1988, ISBN 963-13-2654-3 ); Ludwig Bachmann : From bygone times. Pictures from the history of the development of the practical game of chess. 2 volumes. Berlin 1920-1922 (Volume 2: pp. 305-307).
7. ↑ Vincenz Grimm: Jellacsichiade. Heroic poem in five songs , Leipzig 1850
8. ↑ Grimm allegedly died in Constantinople in 1869 (Bachmann). See also the reference in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1888), vol. 5, p. 602, in the article Chess
9. ↑ Improved solution according to L. Bledow and O. von Oppen: Stamma's Hundred Endgames , Berlin 1856, p. 201
10. ↑ Quoted from Bachmann; Frederick Milne Edge: Paul Morphy, the Chess Champion , New York 1859, p. 58
11. ↑ (Sources: Schachzeitung 1846 and 1851); see also László Orbán's book Schach als Denkspiel (Munich 1974, ISBN 3-423-01029-0 ), which contains a (fourth?) short game Grimms against an anonymous opponent, which was played in "Constantinople 1864".
12. ^ Digitized: The Chess Tournament , London 1852, p. XXIV
13. ↑ V. Grimm: Chess at Aleppo , in: The Chess Player's Chronicle 1851, pp. 184-186
14. ^ HJR Murray: A History of Chess , Oxford University Press 1913, pp. 358f .; Grimm: Chess at Aleppo
15. ↑ David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld: The Oxford Companion to Chess . Oxford University Press 1987, p. 134 under Grimm Attack .

literature

• Gedeon Barcza , Árpád Földeák, Emil Gelenczei, József Hajtun: Magyar sakktörténet 1. Sport Publishing House, Budapest 1975, ISBN 963-253-239-2 , Hajtun: pp. 78-82.
• Ludwig Bachmann : From bygone times. Pictures from the history of the development of the practical game of chess. 2 volumes. Berlin 1920-1922 (Volume 2: pp. 305-307).

Web links

Commons : Vincenz Grimm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Sarah's Chess Journal website : Vincent Grimm (1800–1872) (English)
• CV at Magyar Életrajzi Lexicon 1000–1990 (Hungarian)
• Bibliography of Grimm's writings (Hungarian)
• History of the Pest Chess Club ( Memento from March 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (Hungarian)

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 31, 2007 .