Antonius van der Linde

Antonius van der Linde

Antonius van der Linde (born November 14, 1833 in Haarlem , † August 12, 1897 in Wiesbaden ) was a Dutch historian, librarian, theologian and philologist. He is considered the first well-known chess historian .

Life

As a child, Antonius van der Linde was sent by his Mennonite mother to a school run by this ecclesiastical organization, where he developed a passion for metaphysics and theology at an early age , which initially led him to pursue a career as a clergyman in Amsterdam . But in 1861 he enrolled at the University of Göttingen , where he received his doctorate in 1862 with a paper on Spinoza .

In the same year he returned to the Netherlands and settled in Nijmegen , where he studied chess. He became a member of the local chess circles and began to publish the first chess game. In 1865 his first work on chess appeared in Nijmegen: De schaakpartijen van Gioachino Greco . A short time later he played a correspondence chess competition with the Berlin chess master Jean Dufresne , which van der Linde won 1.5-0.5.

Van der Linde published a pamphlet in 1870 that made him an unpopular person in the Netherlands. In it he carefully refuted the widespread legend that Laurens Janszoon Coster and not Johannes Gutenberg was the inventor of the printing press . In 1871 he moved to Berlin to learn Sanskrit . In 1874 he published his most important work on chess, the history and literature of the game of chess, in the German capital . Even today it is regarded as a standard work on chess history and bibliography.

Also in 1874 van der Linde returned to his homeland and settled in Arnhem . His book Het Schaakspel in Nederland was published in 1875 . In the same year he lost all of his assets invested there due to the bankruptcy of an Amsterdam bank. Van der Linde sold his Spinoza collection (166 volumes) as well as his chess book collection (800 volumes and manuscripts) to the Royal Library in The Hague. This became the basis of one of the largest chess book collections in the world ("Bibliotheca van der Linde- Niemeijeriana ").

In 1876 van der Linde was appointed senior librarian of the Royal State Library in Wiesbaden . This was an expression of recognition for the foreign scholar, for whom the Prussian cultural administration made it easier for him to “exist outside”. In Berlin in 1881 two important works by van der Linde on chess were published. The titles were in the original spelling : The first Jartausend ^{[ sic ]} of chess literature and source studies on the history of the game of chess .

Because he had neglected the library because of his writing activities, van der Linde was put into retirement in 1894 because of "organizational incapacity". His second marriage ended in divorce in 1883. He died alone and in desolate personal circumstances.

Judgment of posterity

The historian Walther Peter Fuchs described van der Linde as a scholar “of unusual fertility in fields as widely divergent as dogmatics , exegesis of biblical writings, ecclesiastical and profane history, philosophy, criticism of the times, biography, bibliography, heraldry and much more besides, as a translator of Works by Spinoza, Ebrard , Schelling and Friedrich Julius Stahl ”. In addition to the chess historical works and the aforementioned story of the invention of the art of printing in 1886, for which he received the title of professor, his thorough investigation Kaspar Hauser , a legend of recent history, should be mentioned. But it also shows a weakness of van der Linde, namely his penchant for vicious diatribes and cynicism.

As a chess historian, its importance is undisputed to this day. He understood chess history as the history of chess-related literature. The methods of interpretation he used were borrowed from his original subject, theological exegesis . Although van der Linde was highly committed to historical truth, he tended to be resolute partisans and showed German national prejudices.

Fonts

• The first Jartausend ^[sic] of Schachlitteratur . Berlin 1881
• De schaakpartijen van Gioachino Greco . Nijmegen 1865
• History of the Invention of Book Printing , 3 vols., Berlin 1886
• The chess game of the 16th century . Berlin 1873
• History and literature of the game of chess. First volume. Julius Springer, Berlin 1874 ( digitized ). Second volume. Julius Springer, Berlin 1874 ( digitized ).
• Source studies on the history of the game of chess . Berlin 1881
• Het schaakspel in Nederland . 1875
• Kaspar Hauser. A new historical legend , 2 volumes, Wiesbaden 1887
• Spinoza. His teaching and its aftermath in Holland . Dissertation University, Göttingen 1862

literature

• K. Steiff:  Linde, Antonius van der . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 51, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 717-719.
• Rupprecht Leppla:  Linde, Antonius van der. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 575 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Christiaan M. Bijl: Antonius van der Linde , self-published, Haarlem 1976
• Förderkreis Schach-Geschichtsforschung eV: In memoriam Antonius van der Linde 1833-1897 . Festschrift on the 100th anniversary of his death August 12, 1997, Kelkheim / Ts. 1997 (contains a biography by Egbert Meissenburg)
• Walther Peter Fuchs: Studies on Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden , Stuttgart 1995, pp. 25–30
• KWA Yuletide series 2, Amsterdam 2005
• Rupprecht Leppla: Antonius van der Linde , in: Nassauische Lebensbilder, Vol. 5, Wiesbaden 1955, pp. 233–245

Individual evidence

1. ↑ quoted from Egbert Meissenburg, in: In memoriam Antonius van der Linde 1833-1897 , p. 34
2. ↑ quoted from Egbert Meissenburg, in: In memoriam Antonius van der Linde 1833-1897 , p. 50ff.

Web links

Wikisource: Antonius van der Linde  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Antonius van der Linde in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Antonius van der Linde  in the German Digital Library
• Entry in Meyer's Großes Konversations-Lexikon , Volume 12. Leipzig 1908, p. 566