Personalia

We ring in the new year with the birthday of the great Swedish collector Rolf Littorin who turned 87 on January 3rd. Meanwhile he has nearly completely reduced arduous travelling, so he didn't attend our last KWA meetings either. We refer new members who wish to know more about him to our short eulogy on the occasion of his "85th" in January 2008.

Our Icelandic member Bragi Kristjánsson who celebrated his 65th birthday on Januar 8th was already mentioned in our column as a new member last year. In the meantime we have published a small group photo including him, please throw again a glance at our KWA meeting at Reykjavik 2009. However you will find a whole gallery with numerous pictures at Íslenskir skákmenn.

With Godehard Murkisch a well-known German problemist celebrated his special day on January 10th, he could look back on complete 7 decades. Our appreciation from 2005 gave some information about his varied activities and contributions to chess, and also the Schwalbe book attendant Ralf Krätschmer has devoted a page to "G.M.". We would like to add that Godehard has become a honorary member of the Lower Saxony Chess Federation in 2008 - as the head of division "problem chess", a job he has done for 41 years(!) till 2007.
After his best friend and long-standing companion Winfried E. Kuhn (Lüneburg) had passed away in 2004 (see our short obituary [in German only]) only few new works has come out in his collector's publishing house Nightrider Unlimited (such as the problem selections of Günther Jahn [2005] and Herbert Ahues [20062], now partly out of print already). You will find an up-to-date list of the Kuhn/Murkisch series linked in the a.m. obituary, and a further photo of G.M. (from the Schwalbe meeting in Forchheim, 2007) at Wikimedia Commons.

On January 18th the time had also come for our Swiss IM and chess historian Richard Forster, he is now 35 years young. He is known to have appeared in the last years as an author and editor of mostly heavyweight, qualitatively top-class chess works setting high standards, the Amos Burn book (2004) being only the beginning of an astonishing series: the publication of the Erwin Voellmy biography (2005) may still pass as an ordinary spare-time work, by the publication of the large-calibre "Festschrift" on the 200th club anniversary of the SG Zurich (2009; as the only author) he presented again an outstanding chess historical work which is unparalleled in the category "commemorative publications". Even if this intensive work as an author was only to manage with the help of a sabbatical year, this was unquestionably a "fabulous" achievement. Especially as he played a substantial role at the same time – as the main editor – in the completion of a further mammoth book, the Lasker monograph. We are already wondering what we will have to report about this eminently productive chess author in the year 2015…

In German KWA circles we can now greet Andreas Saremba who celebrated his 55th birtday on January 21st. We had introduced him 5 years ago as a collector on and a biographer of Jean Dufresne, in the meantime his Dufresne booklet has seen a second edition (2006, again self-published; distributed to those present at the Uncovering of the Dufresne Commemorative Plaque in Berlin-Weißensee). On this occasion once more the link to the interview by Johannes Fischer at ChessBase: Andreas Saremba on Jean Dufresne (in German only).
Andreas was involved as a co-author in additional publications of the Emanuel Lasker Society, we call to mind the "Fundraising Brochure" Das Lasker-Haus in Thyrow (2005) as well as the work 65 Jahre Schachnovelle (2007; also edited together with Susanna Poldauf) which was published in a production of high quality (colour print) – see for that Susanna Poldauf's web site. After all he paid tribute to the unforgotten Nimzowitsch expert Rudolf Reinhardt in an obituary in KARL 3/2006. The book project mentioned there, a work on Nimzowitsch based on Reinhardt's research, is obviously still waiting for realization (by a project group).

The Icelandic grandmaster legend Friðrik Ólafsson can refer to a special birthday as on January 26th he had completed three-quarters of a century. As we can add nearly nothing of importance to the detailed appreciation of last year, we still give here a link to a new gallery where he appears several times: www.praguechess.cz/... - simul of Friðrik Ólafsson at Marienbad 2009 against 23 opponents which he won 18:5 with only one game lost; as well as an Icelandic page with numerous caricatures. Of course we keep our fingers crossed for him that the book planned by the Icelandic chess friends on the occasion of his special day will see the light of day this year!




Congratulations!




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