Personalia

This year’s May has 7 birthdays in store for you, this septet will be opened by our Irish correspondence chess expert Timothy D. Harding who celebrated his 60th birthday on May 6th. As an early member of our association we introduced him for the first time in 2004, and many met him personally at our general meeting in Amsterdam 2005. At the moment he is still very busy with his doctoral thesis which he intends to complete this year at the university of Dublin – naturally on a subject of the history of correspondence chess. Owing to these demands he had already ceased the publication of his Chess Mail magazine in the beginning of 2006 – we remind you of Michael Negele’s page Last "Chess Mail" received with thanks. As usual you will find all further news of Tim on his homepage where a link to his full bibliography is included as well.

On May 10th our worldwide famous Bamberg member Lothar Schmid could look back on even two more decades – namely on eight. In the meantime there has been written so much about him in chess publications and in internet articles that everyone is able to get an idea of him without difficulty. You may find recent examples in Schach Magazin 64 5/2008 (p. 45: "Der Jahrhundertschiedsrichter und sein Glücksfall" by Harald Fietz) and at ChessBase where an extensive interview by Dagobert Kohlmeyer "Schach aus Leidenschaft: ..." ["Chess for the love of it ..." ] invites to reading – there Lothar Schmid has also dropped a hint about the potential whereabouts of his huge chess collection. No simple solution seems to be in sight though for the disposal of the Karl May estate recently pursued by him, about this you may read the (German) article "Winnetous Erben" – "Der silberne Löwe wird jetzt versilbert"! from FAZ (10/04/2008).

Our Danish member Jørn Erik Nielsen appears here for the first time, on May 12th he celebrated an anniversary too as he turned 60. He is known to us as a Nimzowitsch expert and collector as well as an active member of his local Aabenraa Skakklub.

Gordon Cadden from Wales who celebrated his 67th birthday on May 15th makes his debut in our column likewise. He too is a collector and furthermore a club player strengthening even two teams of his Newport Chess Club – Newport B and the Newport Dragons.

Our new member Iván Bottlik from Budapest celebrated his 74th birthday on May 18th. Since his publication of the biography of Gyula Breyer (Unterhaching 1999) at the latest he has been well-known in Germany as an author and chess historian, this book contains a short biography of the author (on p.169) as well. As a player he is above all committed to correspondence chess (IMC 1967), but he has also worked with lasting effect as an official in this field (ICCF Vice President 1992-1996; President of the CC Committee of the Hungarian Chess Federation 1989- ?). At the ICCF Congress Dresden 2006 the ICCF Honorary Membership was conferred on him for his more than 25 years of work in the ICCF and for his contribution to international correspondence chess.
Only recently he has delivered an additional chess historical work on Dr János Balogh (see Kaissiber 30 / January–March 2008), the readers will find there a (black and white) photo of our member. There is however a colour photo online at www.iccfus.com/congress2003/... (>> picture 13).

We have already met Wolfgang Angerstein in May 2005, exactly on May 24th he has covered half a century. The internet gives some information about the professional life of our Düsseldorf university professor, unfortunately the time for his chess hobby is chronically restricted. But at least he will contribute to our great Lasker biography a chapter on his dear Laska.

Leo Oomens from Amsterdam is also for the first time in our column, after Eveline Dirksen’s leaving last year he has become our contact in the Max Euwe-Centrum: the 65th anniversary of his birth occurred only two days after the announced MEC book market (on May 24). As an active club player he is currently in the 7th team of the Schaakvereniging Caïssa Amsterdam, and now and then you will find contributions from his pen to the club magazine CaïssaNieuws which is online available (from 2004; as pdf-files): Clubblad - CaïssaNieuws.   Photo: Leo Oomens (on the left) and Bert Corneth

Congratulations!



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