Rolf Schwarz

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Rolf Schwarz (born March 26, 1926 in Berlin ; † March 25, 2013 there ) was a German chess player and chess author . In about forty years from 1951 onwards, he wrote over thirty opening books . He was one of the most famous German-speaking chess authors.

Life

Schwarz took part in the Second World War as a soldier in the Air Force, where he learned to play chess. After the war he became a teacher of history, German and mathematics and later the rector of a high school . He had two daughters and lived in Berlin.

Chess career

In 1947, Rolf Schwarz was one of the founding members of the Lasker-Steglitz chess club with Heinz Lehmann and Rudolf Teschner . In the post-war period he was one of the well-known players in Berlin and took part in the Berlin championship in 1949. He had a greater inclination and aptitude for attack and the calculation of specific variants than for long-term strategy .

Chess journalist and author

Schwarz began his work as a chess author in 1950 when he reported on the GDR championship in Sömmerda on behalf of the German Sports Committee of the GDR . The following year, his first opening book, a monograph on the French defense , was published by Sportverlag Berlin in the series “Collective Library for Body Culture” . In 1953 he and Hans Platz followed up with a 540-page volume on the Sicilian Defense , which was sold 16,000 times.

In 1958 he started working with Kurt Rattmann , in the course of which he wrote a total of 22 opening books in the series “Handbook of Chess Openings” by the mid-1980s. In this "green series" (so-called after the uniformly designed cover), the volume published in 1960 for the little-played Bird opening was the greatest sales success. In 1997 this work was reprinted by Manuel Fruth (but without the green cover).

Schwarz later switched to Schmaus-Verlag in Heidelberg, which published a total of seven opening books by him. In addition to four gambit books on the Volga Benkö gambit , the Göring gambit , the Morra gambit and the Sicilian grand piano gambit , these were monographs on Sicilian with 5.… e7 – e5, Sicilian with 2. c2 – c3 and the opening b2 -B3.

For the chess magazine 64 he was responsible for the "Fit through Gambit" section until the 1990s. The last time he published in 1993 with 4. Bc1 – g5 against Grünfeld-Indian and Sicilian 2. b3 / 2. Nf3 e6 3. b3 two volumes was self-published .

literature

Works (selection)

  • Handbook of chess openings , a total of 22 volumes published by Das Schach-Archiv Rattmann
  • Gambit series , 4 volumes, Schmaus-Verlag

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Fietz: Networking instead of getting bogged down. Chess theorist Rolf Schwarz died at the age of 87. In: Schach-Magazin 64 , May 2013, pp. 49–50.
  2. ↑ Fruth, 2nd edition Unterhaching 1997 of the Hamburg 1960 edition ("unchanged reprint of the classic from 1960").
personal data
SURNAME Black, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chess player and chess author
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 25.2013
Place of death Berlin