Chess club

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Meeting of the generations in the chess club

A chess club (also a chess club ) is an association whose purpose is to maintain the game of chess . Club chess players are organized either in independent clubs or in the chess departments of sports clubs. Chess clubs and departments are also united in chess associations .

The organization of chess life in clubs - instead of the long prevalent game in coffee houses - has a long tradition in German-speaking countries. After the First World War , the clubs were particularly important for the revival of team chess .

Chess clubs usually have a club evening once a week, on which various club-internal chess tournaments are organized, but there is also an opportunity for free play. They usually take part in the team fights of the chess associations. A team is usually made up of eight players. Small clubs only have one team, while the largest clubs with ten or more teams take part in organized matches.

In German tax law , the promotion of the game of chess is a charitable purpose in accordance with Section 52 Paragraph 2 Item 21 of the Tax Code .

In Germany there are around 90,000 active chess players who are organized in around 2,400 chess clubs. Under the German Chess Federation there are one or two regional associations in each federal state. The regional associations, in turn, are usually further subdivided into districts and districts according to the regional principle.

In 1920 the Austrian Chess Federation was founded in Vienna.

The Swiss Chess Federation (SSB) was created through the merger of the Swiss Chess Federation (SSV) founded in 1889 and the Swiss Workers' Chess Federation (SASB) founded in 1923. It represents 5893 members and 238 chess clubs.

History of the chess clubs

Game night at the Portland, Oregon city ​​chess club in 1914

Beginnings in the Age of Enlightenment

In the European metropolises of London and Paris , chess clubs already existed in the 18th century in connection with the leading coffee houses or restaurants in which chess was played. The oldest club of its kind was in Slaughter's Coffee House . In the 1770s there was news of two new London clubs, of which Parsloe's or London Chess Club, founded in 1774, was closely linked to the name Philidors . In the German-speaking area, too, chess was cultivated in private circles, reading groups and coffee houses. The oldest Berlin education society, the Monday Club founded in 1749 , was the first German association to explicitly refer to the game of chess in its association statutes, which were drawn up in 1787: Apart from the game of chess, no other game is tolerated in the club. In 1803 a circle around Johann Gottfried Schadow founded a chess club in Berlin , which existed until 1847. At that time, members of these associations were predominantly civil servants , nobles , merchants and officers . However, these early chess clubs did not last long.

Oldest chess clubs still in existence today

The world's oldest club still in existence today is the Zurich Chess Society, founded in 1809 . In Germany this is the Berlin Chess Society from 1827, to which Paul Rudolf von Bilguer , Tassilo von Heydebrand and the Lasa and Emanuel Lasker belonged. The Amsterdamsch Schaakgenootschap has existed in the Netherlands since 1822 . The first chess club in Austria was the Vienna Chess Society , founded in 1857 , whose successor, the Vienna Chess Club , was dissolved in 1938. Today the oldest (since 1877) existing club is the Graz Chess Society .

The 10 oldest German chess clubs:

  1. Berlin Chess Society 1827 Eckbauer eV
  2. Hamburger SK from 1830
  3. Munich SC 1836
  4. Elberfeld Chess Society 1851
  5. Krefeld chess club Turm 1851 eV
  6. Karlsruhe Chess Friends from 1853
  7. Düsseldorf Chess Club from 1854
  8. Ansbach Chess Club 1855
  9. Aachen Chess Club 1856
  10. SK 1858 Giessen

The oldest chess clubs in Austria:

  1. Vienna Chess Society 1857
  2. SC Hakoah Vienna 1909
  3. SK Baden 1922
  4. ATSV Wolfsberg 1923
  5. SK Hohenems 1926

The oldest Swiss chess clubs:

  1. Chess Society Zurich 1809
  2. Chess Society Winterthur 1865
  3. Lucerne Chess Club 1875
  4. SG Riehen 1928
  5. SV Wollishofen 1933

Club competitions

Bundesliga match (2007) in Baden-Baden

In the 19th century, since direct competitions were difficult due to the geographical distance, chess clubs sometimes measured their strengths in correspondence games across national borders . This encouraged the occupation with the chess theory and especially the openings . The next step was the creation of the first national chess organizations in which the clubs merged. Gradually modern team chess emerged. Multi-tier league systems exist in a number of countries today. At the top of the divisions in Germany has been the German Chess League, consisting of sixteen teams, since 1980 . A European club championship is held annually .

Women in chess clubs

The participation of women only became possible late. The first short-lived "Ladies Chess Club" was founded in Kensington in West London in 1847 under the name The Penelope Club . The first German women's chess club was founded in 1886 in the chess village of Ströbeck , which was followed two years later by another women's club in Colmar , Alsace . The separation by gender was weakened in the period that followed. The first German “men's club” to accept a woman was the Munich Chess Club in 1885 . Later, separate women's tournaments and women's teams were set up within the framework of the existing clubs.

Workers in chess clubs

The class of workers was initially indirectly excluded in the associations of a bourgeois character, which, in addition to the existing social barriers, was connected with the amount of the membership fees required. The first workers' chess clubs were established at the beginning of the 20th century . These organized an independent game operation for workers' chess clubs and national individual and team championships.

Chess clubs in the time of National Socialism

In 1933, the chess organization was created by the new Nazi rulers brought into line . All chess clubs had to join the Greater German Chess Federation or were dissolved. Jews had to be excluded from the associations.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Schachverein  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of chess clubs in the German Schachbund e. V.
  2. ↑ chess.at: yesterday, today, tomorrow
  3. ↑ George Allen: The Life of Philidor. Musician and Chessplayer , EH Butler & Co., Philadelphia 1863, pp. 69-91.
  4. ↑ Chess in Austria, yesterday - today - tomorrow