Carl August Walbrodt

Carl August Walbrodt, towards the end of the 19th century
Association	German Empire
Born	November 28, 1871 Amsterdam
Died	October 3, 1902 Berlin
Best Elo rating	2706 (October 1893) ( Historic Elo rating )

Carl August Walbrodt (born November 28, 1871 in Amsterdam , † October 3, 1902 in Berlin ) was a German chess master.

Life path

Carl August Walbrodt was born in Amsterdam as the son of German parents. He spent his youth in the then still independent city of Köpenick near Berlin. Raised to the merchant class , he became co-owner of a factory. Walbrodt, who is described as short, concentrated on the game of chess, for which he showed a great talent. His health suffered early from a lung disease.

The New York Times obituary for Walbrodt stated that his tremendous talent was discovered in 1890 in a Berlin café by Richard Buz, a leading member of the Manhattan Chess Club . When Buz found out that Walbrodt had no contact with a chess club , the latter introduced him personally to the Berlin chess society.

According to Siegbert Tarrasch , Walbrodt "appeared in Berlin chess circles in 1891 and quickly made a big name for himself in the chess world through an uninterrupted chain of match and tournament successes". Walbrodt achieved his best historical rating of 2706 as early as 1893. Accordingly, he was fifth in the subsequently calculated world rankings.

Apart from tournament and competitive chess (for details see below), Walbrodt was editor of the Berliner Schachzeitung (in the first year of its existence) and founded the International Chess Journal , which, however, could not hold its own for long. He also headed several chess columns, most recently in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger . Walbrodt founded a. a. the chess club Nordstern and belonged to several clubs as an honorary member. In 1897/98 the businessman, who now lives in Kreuzberg, was chairman of the Centrum chess club .

The tournament game was no longer possible long before his death due to his health, although this improved temporarily in the summer of 1902. So he still saw simultaneous performances. On August 30, 1902, he gave a simultaneous on 22 boards in the Chess Club Springer , but was replaced by H. Wolf and Curt von Bardeleben , who alternately played the games to the end (+20 = 1 −1). Walbrodt died of tuberculosis a month later .

In his honor, the Nordstern chess club renamed itself the Walbrodt chess club . The club was domiciled in Müllerstrasse in the Berlin district of Wedding .

Tournaments

At the age of 21 he achieved 4th / 5th place at the congress of the German Chess Federation in Dresden in 1892 . Place and did not lose a single game (+4, = 12). The following year he shared first place with Curt von Bardeleben in Kiel , which was equivalent to the German championship title. At the congress in Leipzig in 1894 he again achieved a divided 4th / 5th. Price.

At the great international tournament of Hastings in 1895 he landed in midfield in eleventh place out of a total of 22 participants. In 1896 he took part in two other important international tournaments, in Nuremberg he shared the 7th / 8th with Carl Schlechter . Price and in Budapest it reached the 6./7. Price. In 1897 he took second place at the tournament of the Berlin Chess Society. In the first round, Walbrodt defeated the eventual tournament winner Rudolf Charousek , followed by Joseph Henry Blackburne , David Janowski and Amos Burn . According to the verdict of the German Chess Newspaper, he achieved his greatest success as a master by "almost contesting first prize for Charousek" . At the beginning of this year, Walbrodt had been less successful. In a small championship tournament of the Centrum chess club, he was only fifth behind von Bardeleben, Charousek, Wilhelm Cohn and Jacques Mieses, ahead of Arved Heinrichsen and Franz Gutmayer . In Vienna 1898 he received a special price.

Duels

Walbrodt won his first major competition in Berlin in 1891 against Emil Schallopp with 5: 3 (+5 = 1 −3). The match began extremely unfavorably for Walbrodt: Schallopp took the lead 3-0, only the second game was able to keep Walbrodt a draw. But then the well-known master Schallopp lost five games in a row against his young opponent.

Walbrodt's sensational catch-up caused a lot of discussion in the chess world and Walbrodt himself now became more courageous and challenged Theodor von Scheve . The fight began on October 14, 1891, and after a persistent dispute, the first game ended in a draw. The winner should be whoever wins five games first - although the first three draws shouldn't count. The game was played on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons in the Schillergarten, Bellevuestr. 20 in Berlin. The competition was abandoned after ten draws, after each player had won four games and two games ended in a draw.

Before the match against von Scheve, Walbrodt had also defeated Hermann Keidanski 5: 1 ( +5 , -1) at the end of August 1891 . In June 1892 he finally beat Curt von Bardeleben 4: 0 (+4 = 4 −0). Von Bardeleben did not appear for the ninth game after he had not taken up the interrupted eighth game and therefore lost. The winner should actually be whoever had six winning games first. The stake for the competition was 300 marks on each side.

In 1893 Walbrodt won on a trip to America made possible for him by the club in Havana , against a number of weaker opponents (Vasquez, Ettlinger and Eugene Delmar ), but lost to Pillsbury in Boston . In 1894 he defeated Wilhelm Cohn 5-0 in Berlin and drew a match with Jacques Mieses .

After his previous successes, Walbrodt challenged Siegbert Tarrasch to a competition in 1894. The match was originally supposed to take place in Berlin and was scheduled for ten winning games. Finally, the competition was moved to Nuremberg and played for seven games. The stake in this case was 800 marks. Tarrasch scored an overwhelming 7-0 win, only one game ended in a draw. The crowd was unusually large, a concluding simultaneous game by Walbrodt against 51 opponents (+42 = 4 −5) is said to have been attended by 800 people. A fight for revenge proposed by Walbrodt in the following year did not materialize.

On November 3, 1897 Walbrodt began - alternately in the rooms of the Berlin Chess Society and the Chess Club Centrum - a six-game competition against David Janowski . The stake was 1,000 marks. Walbrodt won the second and fourth game and led 3-1, so that he only missed a draw to win the match. Janowski, however, equalized with two wins to 3: 3. In the event, an extension of three games was agreed. Janowski won the next two games and decided the fight against Walbrodt (+2 = 2 −4).

Chess composition

Walbrodt composed the following miniature.

Carl August Walbrodt
Daily Review, 1891

	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 three moves

Solution :
1. De1 – c1 Kd4xe5 2. Dc1 – e3 + Ke5-f (d) 6 3. Qe3 – e7
mate 1.… Nb2 – d3 2. Ne5xd3 Kd4 – e4 3. Qc1 – f4
mate 1.… Nb2 – c4 2. Ne5 – d7 S any 3. Qc1 – c5 mate

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Obituary for Walbrodt (English) in: The New York Times, October 4, 1902
2. ^ Siegbert Tarrasch: Dreihundred Schachpartien , Gouda 1925 (3rd edition), p. 473
3. ↑ Berliner Chessverband : Chronik 1902 ( memento from July 23, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), entry August 30, 1902
4. ^ The national tournament Kiel 1893 (8th DSB Congress) on TeleSchach (cross table and games)
5. ^ Obituary for Walbrodt ( Memento of January 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), in: Deutsche Schachzeitung , December 1902, p. 360; Table international tournament Berlin 1897 ( Memento from November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ For this and the following information (competitions against von Scheve and Keidanksi) see Berlin chess sheet 76: Karl August Walbrodt mixes up the chess scene ( Memento from January 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Berlin Chess Association: Chronicle 1892 ( Memento from September 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Wolfgang Kamm: Siegbert Tarrasch, Life and Work . Unterhaching 2004, p. 171ff. ISBN 3-933105-06-4 .
9. ↑ Berlin Chess Association: Chronicle 1897 ( Memento from October 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

• Playable chess games by Carl August Walbrodt on chessgames.com (English)
• Compositions by Carl August Walbrodt on the PDB server