Personalia

At the end of the year our Forchheim member Rudolf Glenk is once more at the top of the birthday list, he celebrated his special day on 12/12/2009 – when the event of his birth was 72 years ago. He is known to have distinguished himself in the past with problem chess publications which we have reported about several times (see December 2008 etc.). As a bibliographer he has finally dealt with the Italian chess literature: His work Hinterm Schachofen, edited and privately published at the end of 2008 (see our announcement), has met with general enthusiastic approval, even if limited to a small circle as unfortunately this fine book could only come out in a very small edition.

This month a further Spanish chess friend has decided to join the KWA: at the same time Francisco Javier Asturiano Molina-Niñirola from Murcia celebrated his 38th birthday (on 13 December), therefore we gladly take the opportunity to introduce him briefly. His chess interests focus on chess history, correspondence chess and Spanish chess literature, these key aspects are also reflected in his nice Blog on chess culture which he frequently enriches with new content.

One day later it was again Alessandro Sanvito's turn, he has reached the "71" now. Certainly his participation in the symposium at Valencia is still well remembered and also documented by illustrations in our short report. Moreover we would like to point to two articles from his pen which have been published this year in L’Italia Scacchistica: Un vecchio codice scacchistico chiamato Archinto (Sept./Oct. 2009, p. 340-346) as well as Il mistero di un testimone del Civis Bononiae (Nov. 2009, p. 366-372). The commemorative publication in honour of Alessandro, announced for 2009, will be published with a short delay in the coming year.

As a new member (joining the KWA middle of 2009) Wim Postema makes his debut in our column, he could look back on 61 years on December 15th. The interests of our Dutch chess friend (resident in Amsterdam) particularly concentrate on Dutch/German tournaments and matches before 1945.

Very well known to us is Dale A. Brandreth who turned 78 on December 17th. This year the long-standing chess publisher from Delaware has once more expanded his CAISSA EDITIONS series by a tournament book (Chicago 1926 - Lake Hopatcong 1926 Chess Tournaments), we refer to an online review of the volume: The Kenilworthian and to the Caissa Editions bookstore.

As an exception this time Kurt Landsberger doesn't come last in our list where he is included with impressive 89 years for the 28th of December. Unfortunately this year we had no chance to meet him personally, at least we could present on our pages the pleasant event of his becoming a great-grandfather. You may find further comprehensive information on Kurt without any problems in the December columns of the previous years, we will still offer here an online review of his Steinitz Papers www.chessville.com/reviews/... as well as two posters on the "Landsberger Foundation" (click to enlarge):






Long-standing readers will already know Yakov Zusmanovich from the 2004 column, our member from California has completed half a century on this New Year's Eve. He also joined in the general meeting at San Francisco where he pleased those present with his lecture on a promising book project. As usual in such cases we wish the author to be lucky with writing now and in future!



Congratulations!




PS: You will find all previous birthday greetings in our archives!