Personalia

Once more our Danish member Stellan Persson "makes the first move" of July, he celebrated his 72nd birthday right on the first of the month. This year again at the end of March he has run his chess book auction being regularly held at Gothenburg, certainly most will still remember the short report of Calle Erlandsson.

As a new member celebrating also a real anniversary, Benoit Ide from the Belgian town of Waasmunster (in the Flemish province of East Flanders) is next, he could look back on half a century on the 4th of July. As a collector he has specialized on chess books printed before 1850 as well as on chess sets. Additionally he deals with the restoration of books.

Two days later Bernd Domsgen from Burg (near Magdeburg) celebrated his birthday, he turned 55. Apart from his working life (he is an insurance broker) and his collecting activities he is committed to his Burg Chess Club 'Schwarz-Weiß', his part in the board is the treasurer position.

A further anniversary follows: our Swiss member Urs Frischherz completed five decades of his life on July 12th. In his job he works as the headmaster of the primary school of Lauerz (on its web site he is also shown among the members of the teaching staff); in his chess life he is not only active as a collector but he is also a member of the Chess Association Goldau-Schwyz, certainly the win of the Oberglatt Chess Open No.16 was a great success for him, for that see the article from the Zürcher Unterländer (pdf-file) dated 12/11/2002 (in German only). His nice web site for friends of old chess books is still in the net, but meanwhile he has cancelled his list of duplicates and he offers there no books any more for sale.

Our Dresden member Manfred Mädler had his special day on July 15th, so 74 years have now gone by for him and the full ¾ century is in prospect. But before a big first-class event in the form of this year’s Chess Olympiad will be held in his home town, certainly he will not miss that. Naturally a little smaller but quite important for our association will be our general meeting which will take place in Dresden as well at the weekend before the Olympiad. We assume that this meeting – with the help of our Dresden friends - can be notched up as a further success of our still short club history, especially as this event will be bound up with the 5th club anniversary of our association. Naturally you will find the sensational accumulation of interesting chess events in the second half of the year recorded on our page Announcements (with further details), we may look forward to an extremely golden chess autumn 2008 in Germany.

For the first time in our column is Myron Samsin who celebrated his 37th birthday on July 27th, so he is still one of our youngest members. The Canadian from Ottawa is well-known as a chess historian who likes to deal with the early history of our game, think only of his contribution "Pawns and Pieces. Towards the Prehistory of Chess" to the 2003 published book The Anatomy of Chess. Überlegungen zur Herkunft des Schachspiels (Vol. 8 of the series "Tübinger Beiträge zum Thema Schach"). [This article is also available online as pdf-file – on the site of the web site of the Initiative Group Königstein.] Moreover we should mention his worth reading ChessCafe contribution In from the Cold: The Life and Chess of Magnus Smith - the interesting portrait of a less known chess player who came from Iceland to Canada and later on emigrated to the USA (Magnús Magnússon Smith, 1869-1934). At last year’s annual meeting in New York Myron Samsin joined in too, you will find his photo in our gallery "Saturday Meeting" which is linked at the bottom of page 1 of our photo report.

Only one day later our Spanish member José Antonio Garzón reached the "45". We already introduced the now widely known chess historian from Valencia in July 2005, in the meantime he has received a lot of recognition due to the completion of his great work on the rediscovered incunabulum of Francesch Vicent and on the birth and evolution of modern chess (2005 also published in English) – we refer here to our entry in the Publications of our Members. Furthermore he published last year a small book on Luca Pacioli (for some time announced on our page "New Chess Literature"). In next spring our KWA members (provided fond of travelling) will look forward to a regional meeting in Valencia which has already been agreed on in Venice – Spain has crystallized as the cradle of modern chess and therefore should be particularly attractive for chess historians.



Congratulations!




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