Schadow's chess club

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johann Erdmann Hummel: "The game of chess" (around 1819)

The Berlin chess club was the first German chess club , it existed from 1803 to 1847. It is also known as Schadow's chess club because the sculptor Gottfried Schadow played an important role as a founding member and temporary chairman.

requirements

In a longer period around 1800, in an epoch of transition from unreservedly absolutist to bourgeois pre-democratic social systems, numerous salons , clubs and associations emerged in Berlin as elsewhere in which the new ideas and developments were debated. Knowledge of the game of chess was widespread among the followers of the Enlightenment , as a "game of reason" it was a socially respected occupation.

Gottfried Schadow had worked his way up from a humble background and achieved a high social position as court sculptor and head of the Academy of Arts . As was common at the time, he belonged to various associations: for example, he was a member of a Masonic lodge , a regular guest at the Singakademie and co-founder of the Berlin Artists' Association . With his participation, the first German chess club was founded, about which he left detailed information in his "writing calendar". In these octave notebooks, Schadow noted every day - half in German, half in Latin and difficult to decipher - which books he read, which lectures he had heard, which clubs he attended and whom he had met there. For over forty years he spent two to three hours at the chess club several times a week and kept a record of it.

Origin and members

A contemporary author with the abbreviation “L. B. “described the origins of the chess club. After that, in the summer months of 1803, some men met regularly in the evenings in the Berlin zoo to exchange ideas and to occasionally play a game of chess. When winter came, the idea of ​​founding a chess club arose. "Three of their midst were given the job of renting a decent apartment, arranging the necessary chess games and drafting laws." On October 16, 1803 the club was opened. At first it had 34 members, in 1805 the list of members already contained 139 names. The club's premises were on Taubenstrasse not far from the Brandenburg Gate .

The statutes of the association had 70 paragraphs. At the beginning it was determined: "The chess club is a society whose members, as lovers of the game of chess, have come together every day in a certain place in the city." The sole purpose was determined to be "to play chess or to watch this game" .

The members included representatives from various fields such as the doctor Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland , the astronomer Johann Franz Encke , the philosopher and librarian Samuel Heinrich Spiker, the pedagogue Lazarus Bendavid (member from the beginning and preferred chess partner of Schadow), the archaeologist Aloys Hirt , the State official Georg Leopold von Reiswitz (who developed a complex " war game " from the chess game for analyzing military conflicts) and the painter Johann Erdmann Hummel . Occasionally Clemens Brentano , Achim von Arnim and August Wilhelm Schlegel were guests in the club.

The members were mostly active representatives of the late Enlightenment, they stood up for tolerance and freedom of thought, they played chess as a form of reasonable thinking. "On the chessboard, so to speak, they met on neutral ground, on a level of abstraction higher order, a meta-level , on which all the skills that they had to prove themselves in their profession, literally for the course came, but without metierbedingte special knowledge."

But the emphasis was on exclusivity. Whoever wanted to be accepted had to show the recommendation of two members and hold a respected social position. According to the statutes, only those persons could be proposed for membership "who belong to the civil, aristocratic, civil, spiritual or learned class". Members of the military were thus excluded as members, but were allowed in as occasional guests.

An oil painting by Johann Erdmann Hummel, created around 1819, shows a typical game situation of that time, but not in Taubenstrasse, but in a similar setting on Wilhelmstrasse. You can see mostly members of Schadow's chess club, in the background at the window you can see the painter himself. Chess was the only legal game, but not the only occupation in the club. In addition to a reference library with chess literature , the “Reading Cabinet” also had a selection of subscription newspapers . Here was an opportunity to exchange views on science and art, literature and politics.

In the 1840s the club got into a critical situation. The number of members decreased. A clear reason for the decline is not known, the causes are seen in a lack of youth work and aging. The energy of Schadow, who was now well over 70 years old, had also waned. In 1847 the chess club was dissolved.

Traditional chess games

Chess games that were played in the club itself have not been preserved. However, the games of two correspondence competitions conducted by Julius Mendheim on behalf of the club are documented . These were played between 1829 and 1836 with varying success against the Breslau (2: 0) and Hamburg chess clubs (0: 1, = 1). The leadership of the games (2-0) against Posen in the years 1839/40 was then entrusted to players of the Berlin chess society , which has now been founded , which proves the good relationship between the oldest Berlin chess clubs.

rating

Most chess historians see "Schadows Schachklub" only as a preliminary stage of serious, high-performance club chess , the beginning of which they connect with the founding of the Berlin Chess Society in 1827. There were no elitist access restrictions there, so younger, more ambitious players found acceptance and development opportunities. The older chess club was soon called the "old club" and was critically assessed. The diplomat and excellent chess player Tassilo von Heydebrand and the Lasa wrote in his memoirs in 1859 that he had “no sufficiently precise information” about the beginnings of chess in Berlin, but then said that “the combinations at that time were very limited in terms of method and method be controlled with a clumsy mind. The practical successes cannot have been significant afterwards either. […] In any case, if there had been strong players in Berlin, their customer wouldn't have reached us. So for us it is as if they did not exist. "

According to known sources, the Berlin chess club from 1803 was not a sporty and playful club, but neither was it an association of untalented dignitaries . In the first half of the 19th century it had a firm place in the social and cultural life of Berlin.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Fischer: In search of an unrecognized club. Article in Karl magazine
  2. ↑ Hans Holländer, in: "Schadows Schachklub - a game of reason in Berlin 1803-1850", exhibition catalog, p. 26 (emphasis in the original)
  3. ↑ Fietz, "Lost chess tradition in the heart of Prussia. Berlin exhibition discovers the origins of Germany's oldest chess club “ Rochade Kuppenheim website

literature

  • Barbara Holländer, Hans Holländer , Gottfried Schadow (Illustrator): Schadows Chess Club . A game of reason in Berlin 1803–1850, catalog of the exhibition of the same name in the art library of the Kulturforum October 3 to November 16, 2003. In: Bernd Evers (Ed.): Collection catalogs of the art library . Art library, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz SMBK, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88609-480-4 .

Web links