Adolf Anderssen

Adolf Anderssen
Surname	Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen
Association	Prussia
Born	July 6, 1818 Breslau , Kingdom of Prussia
Died	March 13, 1879 Breslau
Best rating	2744 (August 1870) ( historical rating )

Adolf Anderssen (actually Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen ; * July 6, 1818 in Breslau ; † March 13, 1879 ibid) was a German chess player and one of the strongest chess players of the 19th century worldwide.

Life

Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was born on July 6, 1818 in Breslau as the son of the citizen and businessman August Heinrich Anderssen and Elisabeth Caroline nee Schenck. He was baptized on July 19, 1818 in the main and parish church of St. Elisabeth in Breslau. At least in the years 1820 to 1822, August Heinrich Anderssen ran a tailoring and fashion store, according to the Silesian Instantien Notes. He presumably gave it up before 1824 because it will no longer be performed there. When Adolf Anderssen was accepted into the Elisabeth Gymnasium on September 30, 1830, his father August Heinrich was referred to as a private teacher. Adolf Anderssen's certificate of discharge dated May 22, 1838 is kept by his father as an accountant.

Although Anderssen learned the game of chess from his father in his parents' house at the age of nine, it took a long time for Anderssen's talent to fully develop. Especially during his high school and university days (he studied mathematics and philosophy ) in Breslau, Anderssen could hardly compete with demanding opponents. During this time he developed a number of chess problems , which were published in 1842 under the title Tasks for Chess Players in Breslau.

In 1851 the Berlin Chess Society sent him to the international tournament on the occasion of the World Exhibition in London , which he won, to the general astonishment of the chess world. A game against Lionel Kieseritzky played outside of the tournament is known to this day as the Immortal Game . There was subsequently no competition with the British champion Howard Staunton , who dominated the chess scene .

In 1852 he played another famous game in Berlin: he won the Evergreen Game against Jean Dufresne .

Anderssen wasn't a professional chess player, but earned his living as a professor of mathematics and the German language at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Breslau. He only took part in chess tournaments during the holidays. During the European tour of the American master Paul Morphy in 1858/1859 there was a competition between Anderssen and Morphy in Paris, in which Anderssen had to admit defeat with 2: 7 in two draws . He did not gloss over his defeat, but openly admitted that the greater talent (Morphy) had triumphed. In 1862 he succeeded in repeating his 1851 tournament victory in London. In this strong tournament, the future world champion Wilhelm Steinitz took sixth place. In the summer of 1866 there was a competition between Anderssen and Steinitz, which Anderssen could not win: he was defeated by the younger 6: 8. It is telling that none of the games played between the opponents during their chess life ended in a draw. The overall balance of their tournament and competition games is 10: 9 for Steinitz. After Anderssen's death, Steinitz referred to the aforementioned victory in order to declare himself world chess champion, which nobody denied.

On the occasion of a tournament to celebrate Anderssen's 50th chess anniversary, the German Chess Federation was founded on July 18, 1877 in Leipzig .

Anderssen died on March 13, 1879 at around 9 p.m. after a stroke in his hometown of Breslau and was buried there in the Maria Magdalenen cemetery. The grave was severely damaged by bombing during the Second World War . Therefore, on April 15, 1957, the Polish Chess Federation ordered Anderssen to be exhumed . The remains were transferred to the Ehrenallee of the Osoboiwicka cemetery (Friedhof Oswitz).

An opening is named after Adolf Anderssen : the » Anderssen opening « (1. a2 – a3). With this unusual move Anderssen won against Paul Morphy, Louis Paulsen and others.

Anderssen's best historical rating was 2744. He reached it in 1870. Between 1861 and 1870 he was number 1 in the world rankings several times.

Chess composition

Adolf Anderssen
The Illustrated London News , 1846

	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 five moves

---

After the spectacular queen sacrifice
1. Qb1 – e1! d2xe1D comes after
2. Rd8 – d4 against the threat of
3. Rd4 – a4 + Bb5xa4
4. b3 – b4 + Qe1xb4

5. a3xb4 mate no more defense.

Long before his first games appeared, Anderssen's name became known through the publication of his tasks for chess players and the associated reprint of his compositions in the chess newspapers abroad. He initiated the solution of his tasks with one quiet move - which was still unusual for the times. From 1842 to 1852 he was one of the most important chess composers. 80 chess problems are known from him.

In his work Problemschach (1955), Herbert Grasemann went into the importance of Anderssen for chess composition, which he assessed as no less than Anderssen's competitive successes in games. According to Grasemann, Anderssen significantly deepened the content of the tasks in his tasks compared to early composers of the 19th century such as Julius Brede and was the first to use the silent key move, while this had never been at the beginning of a chess problem before. Anderssen thus “opened the door to the modern era of the chess problem”. As to the composition on the left, Grasemann commented: "The final game, which was already known to the ancient Arabs, is preceded by something completely new: the 'silent' sacrifice of the strongest piece against peasants who are willing to transform ."

List of tournament and competition results

competition	place	Result / score	rank
1848
Competition against Daniel Harrwitz	Wroclaw	4/8 (+4 = 0 −4)	Tie 4-4
1851
International tournament on the occasion of the world exhibition , round of 16 competition against Lionel Kieseritzky	London	2.5 / 3 (+2 = 1 −0)	Anderssen won with 2.5-0.5
International tournament on the occasion of the world exhibition , quarter-finals against Joszef Szén	London	4/6 (+4 = 0 −2)	Anderssen won 4-2
International tournament on the occasion of the world exhibition , semi-final competition against Howard Staunton	London	4/5 (+4 = 0 −1)	Anderssen won 4-1
International tournament on the occasion of the world exhibition , final competition against Marmaduke Wyvill	London	4.5 / 7 (+4 = 1 −2)	Anderssen won with 4.5-2.5 and was therefore considered the best champion in the world.
London Club tournament	London	7/7 (+7 = 0 −0)	1st place
1857
1st British Chess Association (BCA) Congress	Manchester	1/2 (+1 = 0 −1)	Anderssen was eliminated in the 2nd round against Johann Jacob Löwenthal .
1858
Competition with Paul Morphy	Paris	3/11 (+2 = 2 −7)	Morphy won 8-3, making it the world's best player.
1861
Competition with Ignatz von Kolisch	London	5/9 (+4 = 2 −3)	Anderssen won 5-4
1862
International tournament on the occasion of the Great London Exposition , also the 5th Congress of the British Chess Association (BCA)	London	11.5 / 13 (+11 = 1 −1)	1st place
Competition with Louis Paulsen	London	4/8 (+3 = 2 −3)	Tie 4-4
1864
Competition with Berthold Suhle	Berlin	4/8 (+3 = 2 −3)	Tie 4-4
1866
Competition with Wilhelm Steinitz	London	6/14 (+6 = 0 −8)	Steinitz won 8-6 and was henceforth the world's best player.
1868
Competition with Johannes Hermann Zukertort	Berlin	8.5 / 12 (+8 = 1 −3)	Anderssen won 8.5-3.5.
7th Congress of the West German Chess Federation	Aachen	3.5 / 6 (+3 = 1 −2)	2nd place, Anderssen lost the playoff with Max Lange
1869
2nd Congress of the North German Chess Federation	Hamburg	5.5 / 7 (+5 = 1 −1)	1st place, Anderssen defeated Louis Paulsen in a playoff
8th Congress of the West German Chess Federation	Barmen	5/5 (+5 = 0 −0)	1st place
1870
International tournament	Baden-Baden	11/16 (+10 = 2 −4)	1st place
1871
Competition with Johannes Hermann Zukertort	Berlin	2/7 (+2 = 0 −5)	Zukertort won 5-2.
9th Congress of the West German Chess Federation	Krefeld	5/7 (+5 = 0 −2)	2nd place, after a playoff with Louis Paulsen and Johannes Minckwitz
1st Congress of the Central German Chess Federation	Leipzig	5.5 / 6 (+5 = 1 −0)	1st place after a playoff with Samuel Mieses
1872
3rd Congress of the North German Chess Federation	Altona	3.5 / 4 (+3 = 1 −0)	1st place
1873
International tournament on the occasion of the world exhibition	Vienna	19/30 (+17 = 4 −9)	3rd place
1876
2nd Congress of the Central German Chess Federation	Leipzig	5.5 / 7 (+5 = 1 −1)	1st place, after a playoff with Carl Pitschel and Carl Theodor Göring
Competition with Louis Paulsen	Leipzig	4.5 / 10 (+4 = 1 −5)	Paulsen wins with 5.5-4.5
1877
International tournament, the so-called "Anderssen celebration"	Leipzig	9.5 / 12 (+8 = 3 −1)	2nd place after a playoff with Johannes Hermann Zukertort
Competition with Louis Paulsen	Leipzig	3.5 / 9 (+3 = 1 −5)	Paulsen won with 5.5-3.5
1878
International tournament on the occasion of the world exhibition	Paris	12.5 / 22 (+11 = 3 −8)	6th place
12th Congress of the West German Chess Federation	Frankfurt am Main	6/9 (+5 = 2 −2)	3rd place

Well-known games

• Anderssen - Kieseritzky, London 1851 , the "immortal game"
• Anderssen - Dufresne, Berlin 1852 , the "evergreen part"
• Anderssen - Lange, Breslau 1859

Works

• Tasks for chess players, along with their solutions . 2nd edition, Breslau 1852.

literature

• Heinrich Ollscher: Adolph Andersson. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, April 5, 1879, p. 5 (online at ANNO ). .
• Max Lange:  Anderssen, Adolf . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, pp. 776-779.
• Anderssen, Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953,ISBN 3-428-00182-6, p. 269 ( digitized version ).
• Hermann von Gottschall : Adolf Anderssen, the old master of German chess art. Leipzig 1912 (Reprint: Edition Olms, Zurich 1980. ISBN 3-283-00042-5 ).
• Mario Ziegler: The chess tournament London 1851. St. Ingbert 2013, ISBN 978-3-944158-00-6 , pp. 55-63.
• Karl , No. 1/2018 (with the focus on Anderssen & von der Lasa).

Web links

• Replayable chess games by Adolf Anderssen on chessgames.com (English)
• 10 crucial positions from his games (English)
• Compositions by Adolf Anderssen on the PDB server

Individual evidence

1. ^ André Schulz : 200 years of Adolf Anderssen In: de.chessbase.com. July 13, 2018, accessed October 23, 2019.
2. ↑ H. Seger: On the life story of Anderssen . In: Deutsche Schachzeitung , December 1922. pp. 265–267.
3. ^ The International Tournament Leipzig 1877 (MDSB Congress) on TeleSchach (cross table and all games)
4. ↑ 140th anniversary of the death of Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen - German Chess Federation. Retrieved August 25, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Helmut Pfleger : Board game: chess . In: The time . June 13, 2018, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed August 25, 2019]).
6. ^ Eduard Mazel: Adolf Anderssen. In: Walter Fentze: Gallery of Problem Masters . Selbstverlag, Nürnberg 1983, pp. 32–46 (reprint of a series of articles published in the Wiener Schachzeitung ).
7. ^ Herbert Grasemann: Problem chess. Sportverlag Berlin , 1955, pp. 13-15.