Vienna chess club

The Wiener Schachklub (originally Wiener Schach-Club ), which existed from 1897 to 1938, was one of the leading chess clubs in the world in its heyday before the First World War . The club was the successor to the Vienna Chess Society, which was founded in 1857, and arose from its merger with the New Vienna Chess Club .

The Vienna Chess Society

In Vienna , chess life was played out in coffee houses in the first half of the 19th century . It was not until October 1, 1857 that a proper association, the Vienna Chess Society , was founded, which grew rapidly. Annual club tournaments have been held since 1858. The first tournament was won by Ernst Pitschel, the following by Carl Hamppe , and finally the young Wilhelm Steinitz was victorious in the tournament in 1861/62.

After initially changing venues, the chess society, whose membership had already risen to over a hundred, took its seat in a pub in Bräunerstr. 9. The association was characterized by the active participation of noble members and representatives of the bureaucracy and the upper middle class. High membership fees contributed to the exclusivity. A further upswing came when Baron Albert von Rothschild took over the head of the association as president and patron in 1872. Rothschild, who had run the Rothschild Bank since 1874 and was considered the richest man in Austria, promoted many master players, including Miksa Weiß , Berthold Englisch , Adolf Schwarz and Bernhard Fleissig .

In addition to Baron Rothschild, Ignatz von Kolisch acted as a further patron and vice-president of the chess society. Kolisch, who withdrew from tournament chess as a world-class player, had achieved great success in the banking business in Paris in the early 1870s with the help of Rothschild. Against this background - Rothschild and Kolisch donated large sums - the means were available to organize Austria's first international chess tournament during the World Exhibition in Vienna from July 19 to August 29, 1873 . Steinitz was the winner, ahead of Joseph Henry Blackburne and Adolf Anderssen .

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Vienna Chess Society organized another well-endowed international tournament from May 10th to June 26th, 1882, which came about mainly because of the support of Baron Kolisch. The victory among eighteen champions was shared by Steinitz, who resumed active chess after a break of several years, and Simon Winawer . Among the winners were James Mason , George Henry Mackenzie , Johannes Zukertort and Blackburne.

With the major club tournaments and international congresses, the club proved to be a driving force in Viennese chess life. However, the first initiative to found an Austrian chess federation in the early 1870s did not lead to success. A correspondence match between the Vienna Chess Society and the City of London Chess Club , whose games were led by Steinitz, who is now based there, caused a sensation . London won the match, which lasted from 1872 to 1874, with a win and a draw .

Fusion with the New Vienna Chess Club

In 1888, serious competition was established with the New Vienna Chess Club . The younger club successfully recruited members with lower membership fees and high-profile chess events and exhibition fights by well-known masters. The industrialist Leopold Trebitsch (1842–1906) was an important financial sponsor behind the new association .

This situation only existed for a few years. Finally, both clubs were merged in 1897 to form the Vienna Chess Club , which marked the beginning of a heyday for Viennese chess life. In addition to the Café Central , the Vienna Chess Club remained the undisputed center of the Austrian chess scene until the First World War. Baron Rothschild served as president of the new association until his death in 1911.

Development of the chess club until 1914

Until the First World War, the club benefited from the extremely favorable financial situation. The chess club's annual reports regularly concluded with the finding that the deficit that had arisen was made good by Rothschild. At the same time, the association maintained a social entry barrier through a high membership fee.

Until 1923 the master player and chess journalist Georg Marco worked as the "secretary of the association" . He was also editor-in-chief of the Wiener Schachzeitung , founded in 1898 , the first four volumes of which appeared with the subtitle "Organ of the 'Wiener Schach-Club'".

The chess club also served the upper and middle classes of the imperial city as an intellectual meeting place. When it got married around 1910, the club had six hundred members and was one of the international centers of the game of chess. This year the association moved into an elegant domicile in Palais Herberstein on two floors. There were more than twenty halls available to the members, including restaurant rooms for smokers and non-smokers, reading rooms, ladies' and billiards salons.

The highlights of the club's history were the international tournaments, above all the "Kaiser Jubilee Tournament", which took place on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of Emperor Franz Joseph . Twenty players took part in the double-round tournament between May 31 and July 30, 1898. After a playoff between the two best placed tied points, Siegbert Tarrasch won ahead of Harry Nelson Pillsbury .

An unusual event was the gambit tournament of the Vienna Chess Club in 1903. In all games it was stipulated that the participants should play the accepted king's gambit (1. e2 – e4 e7 – e5 2. f2 – f4 e5xf4). The winner Mikhail Chigorin before Frank Marshall and Georg Marco. In 1908 the club again hosted an international tournament. This time Oldřich Duras , Géza Maróczy and Carl Schlechter won with equal points , Akiba Rubinstein followed in fourth place .

The most gifted master of the Vienna chess club was without a doubt Carl Schlechter. His games were considered a prime example of the Vienna Chess School, a positional, defense-conscious style of play that was largely developed in the Vienna Chess Club. Half of the title fight between world chess champions Emanuel Lasker and Schlechter, which took place in 1910, took place in Vienna and Berlin. Three games were played on the premises of the Vienna Chess Club. The fight ended in a draw (1: 1, = 8), which was enough for Lasker to defend his title.

The Trebitsch tournaments

The so-called "Trebitsch tournaments" are a special chapter. Leopold Trebitsch, who, alongside Baron Rothschild, was an important patron of the association, died in 1906. In his honor, his son Oskar Trebitsch donated a fund that was used to finance a regular chess tournament of the Vienna Chess Club. When the club put most of the deposited capital in war bonds in 1916 , much of the money was lost.

Oskar Trebitsch later made contributions available again and thus made the continuation of the series tournament possible. A total of twenty Trebitsch tournaments up to 1937/38 can be proven. The last Trebitsch tournaments were held by the Hietzing chess club since the early 1930s .

Decline after the First World War

After the World War, the Vienna chess club could no longer build on its former glory. During this period of economic hardship, the club struggled with its upper-class image. Chess life in Vienna was also determined by newly founded clubs that were close to different political camps. At the top was the German Chess Club in Vienna , which the Hietzing chess club, previously mentioned, took over in the lead in the early 1930s. Many Jewish chess players also belonged to the chess section of the SC Hakoah Vienna .

The last printed list of members of the Vienna Chess Club contained three hundred names in 1927, including the writers Alfred Polgar and Felix Salten . Most recently, the association was based in a bourgeois apartment at Zedlitzgasse 8. In recent years it has been increasingly inactive. Finally, the Vienna Chess Club 1938 - the year of connection - disbanded because it mostly consisted of Jewish players. The large club library also fell victim to the sad end. Extensive archive material on the history of chess in Vienna was lost.

literature

• Michael Ehn , Ernst Strouhal : Luftmenschen: the chess players of Vienna: Materials and topographies for an urban fringe figure 1700–1938. Special number, Vienna 1998, ISBN 9783854491415 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ehn / Strouhal: Luftmenschen. The chess players of Vienna. Materials and topographies for an urban fringe figure 1700–1938. Vienna 1998, p. 38.
2. ↑ Georg Marco: Wiener Schach-Klub, in: Wiener Schachzeitung 1910, p. 153.
3. ^ Ehn / Strouhal: Luftmenschen. The chess players of Vienna. Materials and topographies for an urban fringe figure 1700–1938. Vienna 1998, p. 40.
4. ^ P. Feenstra Kuiper: Hundred years of chess tournaments. The most important chess tournaments 1851–1950 , Amsterdam 1964, p. 242; Jan van Reek: Leopold Trebitsch Memorial 1909–1938 ( Memento of the original dated December 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Wilfried Dorazil: Schach in Österreich, in: Jerzy Giżycki: Schach zu allen Zeiten , Zurich 1967, p. 72.
6. ^ Ehn / Strouhal: Luftmenschen. The chess players of Vienna. Materials and topographies for an urban fringe figure 1700–1938. Vienna 1998, p. 7.