Persons celebrating an Anniversary in July 2005

At the beginning of our summer birthday round appears Romano Bellucci who enjoyed his 65th birthday on July, 9th in the fascinating city of Venice. Already last year we drew your attention to his nice periodical Scacchi e Scienze Applicate, the last issue includes interestingly enough a bibliographical contribution of our member Alessandro Sanvito about the Christmas series of Alain C. White and of Ken Whyld, the comparison of these "serials" will surely receive the special attention of our members (according to the author there exists an English translation in the meantime).
The book project then proposed by Romano - intending a bibliographical recording of the commemorative publications of German chess clubs – has begun quickly meanwhile and could still be expanded as has been suggested by a third party ...

Only one day later (July, 10th) Jan van Reek was next in line, in the Dutch town of Margraten he looked back on six whole decades. We have already roughly "sketched" our many-sided Jan with his chess activities in our last year’s column, now we can still extend the list of his publications:

  • Jan van Reek: Vier componisten, STES Margraten 2004, 62 p.
  • Jan van Reek: Vladimir Kramnik, STES Margraten 2004, 46 p.
  • Jan van Reek: Super tournaments 1988-2003, STES Margraten 2004, ca. 740 p.

- a short review of these new publications was supplied by our member Ton Sibbing, see the website of the Max Euwe-Centrum: Boekbesprekingen, Recensies Nieuwsbrief 65 Oktober 2004 (scroll down!).
It has also not been mentioned till now that Jan van Reek was one of the three founders of the Chess Events Maastricht Foundation where he acts as a secretary. Eric van Reem’s photo report at the web pages of the "Rochade Kuppenheim" (in German or in Dutch) will give you further information about Maastricht, the foundation’s founding on March 14th, 2000 and the match Loek van Wely – Rebel Century 4.0 organized by the foundation.
As we learn inter alia from internet sources, Jan celebrates his 60th birthday in starting the WebChess Gambit Match which has been sponsored by him and which is held from July 10th, at the ICCF webserver between two former CC world champions - Mikhail Umansky and Gert Timmerman; again you will find more detailed information online at the a.m. server!

In the middle of the month warm congratulations were passed to Dresden-Blasewitz, Manfred Mädler celebrated his 71st birthday there on July, 15th. At the last year’s Forchheim meeting quite a lot of us could welcome him personally and enjoy his merry company in the circle of the evening. That Manfred hasn’t retired by any means is also proven by the newly tackled "Edition Mädler im Beyer Verlag": here the new edition of the evergreen classic Goldene Schachzeiten by Milan Vidmar is planned for the coming autumn and is already announced at the publisher’s website.
A little pleasure will already derive many a member from thinking of the KWA general meeting in 3 years, at that time Dresden is known to expect a big chess event, namely the chess olympiad 2008: we hope that Manfred will be able to attend to this event with unbroken energy and health!

The last birthday of July was celebrated in Spain on July, 28th: José Antonio Garzón was then 42 years young. The collector and chess historian lives in Valencia, his preferred field of work is the genesis of modern chess in Spain towards the end of the 15th century. In Govert Westerveld’s book about the history of draughts (checkers) [La reina Isabel la Católica: su reflejo en la dama poderosa de Valencia, cuna del ajedrez moderno y orígen del juego de damas. (Valencia, 2004)] he has collaborated as coauthor and written the second part which deals with chess and its historical connection with draughts. (Some time ago we presented this book in our Member’s Area.) Unfortunately only at the Spanish pages of ChessBase News some (nicely illustrated) contributions by and on José Antonio Garzón have been published, we had highly appreciated at least an English version too. (For our Spanish speaking chess friends: La dama entra en juego and an article by J. A. Garzón ¿Un sorprendente enroque en América circa 1530?)
Furthermore I would like to point to a paper report in EL PAIS.es of December 12, 2001: La reina del ajedrez era valenciana. Un libro sobre un incunable perdido revela el origen de la dama del tablero, que dio lugar al juego moderno, which includes a photo of José A. Garzón together with the unforgotten IM and chess historian Ricardo Calvo (1943-10-22 to 2002-09-26).

Congratulations!

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