Bruno Rüger

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Bruno Rüger (born July 14, 1886 in Radebeul ; † September 24, 1972 in Dresden ) was a German Go player as well as Go teacher and author and publisher of the German Go newspaper .

Life

A life in the service of the game of Go

Bruno Rüger was probably the most important promoter of the Asian board game Go in Europe before the Second World War . He himself got to know the game in 1912 through an introductory book written by the Graz university professor Leopold Pfaundler (1839-1920). Around 1914 he was called up for military service, but did not come to the front and thus had time to teach his comrades to go. Although still a beginner himself, Rüger wrote instructions in 1916, 10,000 copies of which appeared in the miniature library series . The reactions to this work encourage him to begin privately with the production of Go games with cardboard pieces, which he sends all over the world.

In 1918 Rüger corresponded with Leopold Pfaundler about his book and about the Deutsche Gozeitung , which Pfaundler launched in 1909 , but which only lasted one year. A year later he met a certain Wagner († January 22, 1922), who - without being asked - became a sponsor of the Go game in Germany. With Wagner's financial help, Rüger started publishing the German Gozeitung again on January 1, 1920 . For 25 years he led the newspaper through the difficult times of inflation and the Second World War . Due to inflation, the price of the newspaper rises to over 100,000 marks. The money is usually worthless when it arrives at Rüger, so that he loses several million marks. In 1923 the newspaper had its highest number of subscribers with 113.

In 1921, Rüger received from Dr. Tsutsumi from Japan wrote his first Japanese Go books in Japanese Kanji , but only understands the diagrams and numbers , not the comments. The Viennese secondary school teacher Dr. Eduard Nonnenmacher later supports Rüger with the translation of Japanese Go texts for his publications.

In his function as secretary of the Dresden Chess Club, he found out about Emanuel Lasker 's enthusiasm for Go in the same year and invited him to Dresden, where he offered him 20 marks for a game. Lasker's cousin Eduard Lasker is also caught by Go fever and later spreads it in the USA. In 1922, Rüger introduced its own system for assessing playing strengths in Germany.

Post-war period in the GDR

After the end of the Second World War, Bruno Rüger tried to rebuild Go life in East Germany as quickly as possible. In 1950 a small game community developed in Dresden. Rüger has been the strongest player in the GDR for years. In addition to his active career, he is primarily dedicated to promoting young talent.

In 1961 the first Go meeting in the GDR took place in the Leipzig Opera House, which Rüger helped to organize. The meeting, at which numerous top GDR players are present, becomes an important inventory of go-sport in the GDR.

On March 21 and 22, 1964, the Go Commission of the German Chess Federation of the GDR was founded in Berlin, and Rüger was the first chairman. For reasons of age, however, he gave up this office again in 1966. He continued the Go column in SCHACH magazine until 1969.

On November 22, 1971, the Japanese Go Association awarded Nihon-Kiin Rüger the Okura Prize for special services to the spread of the game of Go. In addition to Rüger, Fritz John from West Berlin also received an honoring handwriting and the golden Go pin.

Rüger died on September 24, 1972 after a short, serious illness at the age of 86 in Dresden.

In his honor, the Bruno Rüger memorial tournament was launched in 1980 - a GDR youth and junior tournament that was held every year between Christmas and New Year.

Bruno Rüger's brother Alfred was also an active go player who lived in Berlin-Neukölln and, in the early 1960s, was already very old himself and could be found regularly on the game evenings of the Berlin Go Club .

The Ruger class system

In 1922, Rüger introduced its own rating scale with 50 classes based on the Japanese classification system (later expanded to 120 classes by the Leipzig Go teacher Erwin Parchwitz), which was still valid in the GDR until around 1977 (in West Berlin and in the Federal Republic began the change about ten years earlier) and was then replaced by the Dan / Kyu system. The Ruger class system had the advantage of being able to more precisely determine the specification that the weaker player receives to compensate for the difference in strength. The number of default stones was calculated according to the formula "(class difference + 1) * 0.5", a Japanese Dan / Kyu degree thus includes two Ruger degrees. "Half" handicap stones mean 5 points "Komi" (points credit). This advantage, which is particularly important when playing with a low handicap, was given up in favor of international comparability.

Dan / Kyu degrees of amateurs had the following equivalent (see some examples of degrees from the GDR 1977) 

Klasse  1 –  7 Profibereich
Klasse  8 –  9 6. Dan
Klasse 10 – 11 5. Dan
Klasse 12 – 13 4. Dan
Klasse 14 – 15 3. Dan (Manfred Soller, Karl-Heinz Vogel)
Klasse 16 – 17 2. Dan (S. Steffens, Rudolf Erfurth, Wolfgang John, S. Unger)
Klasse 18 – 19 1. Dan (P. Passow)
Klasse 20 – 21 1. Kyu (M. Arnold)
Klasse 22 – 23 2. Kyu (P. Blechschmidt)
Klasse 24 – 25 3. Kyu (Dr. U. Sachsenweger)
...
Klasse 30 – 31 6. Kyu (E. Parchwitz)
...
Klasse 120 Totalanfänger

Some of the classifications at that time (without an exact time allocation) were: 

Klasse 23 Felix Dueball
Klasse 26 Bruno Rüger
Klasse 27 Sprague
Klasse 29 Alfred Rüger (Bruder von Bruno Rüger)
Klasse 45 W. Noack

Works (selection)

  • Book Das Go-Spiel , published in 1920 with financial help from Wagner.
  • Interesting Go games , Berlin 1925, published as a supplement to his Go textbook.
  • Instructions for opening Go games , 1928.
  • Important joseki in the handicap game , 1929.
  • The default game in Go. Treatment of the most important joseki and detailed description of default openings , 1930.
  • Das Go-Spiel , 1937/38, four volumes with the help of Dr. Eduard Nonnenmacher .
  • Puzzles, jokes and magic. A happy activity book . Illustrations by Johannes Lebek . Hofmeister, Leipzig 1958 (2nd edition, 1962).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of Go in Leipzig and Schkeuditz 1970–1979 ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Rüger, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German go-player
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Radebeul
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1972
Place of death Dresden