Adolf Stern (chess player)

Adolf Stern (born December 25, 1849 in Grünstadt , † August 24, 1907 in Mannheim ) was a German chess player .

He was the middle of three children of the Jewish merchant Jacob Stern and his wife Babette Caroline. The father died early but left a considerable inheritance so that the family did not have to suffer material worries.

It is not exactly known when Stern learned to play chess. He first appeared in the beginning of 1870 when he won a competition against the otherwise unknown Dr. Erlenmeyer from Munich. Four games of this competition were published in the Deutsche Schachzeitung in 1873 . He was then admitted as a talented young player to participate in the busy international tournament in Baden-Baden in 1870. However, Stern had to leave after only four laps, since he was drafted into the Bavarian army as a reservist. He lost two games in the tournament against Johannes Minckwitz and the eventual world champion Wilhelm Steinitz. However, he was winning against both in his white games, but lost by exceeding the cooling time. His opponents agreed to play the games to the end anyway. Stern won the game against Minckwitz, and he scored a draw against Steinitz.

Stern took part as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War and during this time wrote three letters to the editor of the German Chess Newspaper, in which he reported, among other things, on a visit to the famous Café de la Régence in Paris. After the war he took part in the chess congresses in Wiesbaden and Bad Ems in August and September 1871 , where he took second place out of five participants. In December 1873 he opened a shop in Mannheim together with his younger brother Ferdinand and largely withdrew from active tournament play. At the chess congress in Frankfurt am Main in 1878 he attempted a comeback, but only finished penultimate with 2 points from 9 games.

In 1873, in his capacity as secretary of the Mannheim Chess Club, he gave the impetus to found a Southwest German Chess Federation. It took six years to implement this proposal. In 1879, Stern organized the first congress of the Southwest German Chess Federation in Heidelberg and became its first president. In 1882 he was made honorary president. From 1886 to 1889 he was editor of the weekly Südwestdeutsche chess newspaper. There he also reported on some free games that he played during spa stays in the seaside resort of Ostend .

From 1889 he withdrew completely from the public and died at the age of 57. He remained single and childless.

His best historical rating was 2483 in August 1872.

literature

• Stefan Haas: The chess tournament Baden-Baden 1870, the unknown chess master Adolf Stern . Rattmann, Ludwigshafen 2006. ISBN 3-88086-190-0 .