Persons celebrating an Anniversary in March 2004

This time our first birthday greetings go to the Dutch town of Gennep where the chess collector Pierre Voss celebrated his 52nd birthday on March 5. Thomas Lemanczyk who turned 33 on March 13 is the junior of this month. He has especially rendered great services to the translation of the Zukertort biography which should appear in the course of this year.

Only one day later the English chess historian Owen Hindle was next in line, the years he reached equal now the number of squares of the chessboard. As FIDE master he has represented his country two times at Olympiads (Tel Aviv and Havanna) and at the World Championship Zonal 1967. In this country he became particularly known by his books: Further Steps in Chess (s. a.); The Piatigorsky Cup Tournament 1963 (s. a.); J.H. Blackburne – The Final Years (1998); and finally (co-authored by Bob Jones) „The English Morphy“? The Life and Games of Cecil de Vere - First British Chess Champion (2001).

Again we move a day forward and congratulate Hans-Jürgen Fresen who celebrated his 51st birthday on March 15. He belongs to the great German chess collectors, his extremely well-tended library (with main emphasis on German chess literature) will surely include more than 10,000 books now. As Director of Play and Junior Chess Co-ordinator he is actively integrated into the club life of his Bochum Chess Club 02 and he has decisively contributed to the club’s chronicle at its 100th anniversary (100 Jahre Schach in Bochum; 2002).

Our chess friend from the Dutch town of Amersfoort, Bab Wilders celebrated his 62nd birthday on March 19 – he took over his rare first name (supposed to be an abbreviation for “Barend”) from his forefathers. He became involved in chess rather late, he learned the game at the age of 21. According to him he is in possession of a small chess library and he is active as a columnist at Nederlands Dagblad – he runs a weekly chess column there, mostly including book reviews.

Kind greetings go to Norway, too, where Øystein Brekke turned 48 on March 22. Obviously he is the only one who did research on the chess history of his country and he has published a number of books on this subject [Spill sjakk 1 and 2 (1981, 1983); VM-sjakk i 100 år (1986, together with Sigurd Heiestad); Stormestersjakk i Gausdal (1987); Norges Sjakkforbund 75 år (1989); Sjakkens Holmenkollen – Gausdal-sjakk 1990-96 (1997); Nordisk sjakk i 100 år (1999)], in addition he was active in journalism as editor of Norsk Sjakkblad (1975-79 and 2000). He is also a strong player (highest FIDE rating 2225 from 1996), since 1980 International Arbiter of FIDE and he held several administrative posts as General Secretary of Norges Sjakkforbund (1982-88) and as Permanent FIDE delegate for Norway (1980-88).

Ulrich Schädler who is very busy as the director of the Musée Suisse du Jeu (located at Lake Geneva) will be the next one on our birthday list, he celebrated his 46th birthday on March 24. He is especially in the limelight of the KWA now as he took over the book collection of Ken Whyld – our extra page On the Fate of the Ken Whyld library informs about the progress of this project.

To conclude our birthdays in March we would like to congratulate Wladimir V. Sokolow, he turned 54 on March 27. The result of his activities in chess journalism were a few bulletins in Russian and three small books on problem collections: W.P. Antipow „The Problemist“ 1989-1993. Ausgewählte Zweizüger-Miniaturen (1994; 24 p., English). W.P. Antipow, W.V. Sokolow „Sahovska kompozicija“ 1989-1992. Ausgewählte Miniaturen #2, #3 (1994; 16 p., Serbo-Croat). Wjatscheslaw P. Antipow - Im faszinierenden Banne der Schachminiatur. Ausgewählte Dreizüger (1999; 56 p., Russian/German).

Congratulations to all!