Persons celebrating an Anniversary in December 2008

At the end of the year our first greetings go to the Central Franconian town of Forchheim, our founding member Rudolf Glenk completed his 71st year of his life there on 12-12-2008. Last year, on the occasion of his "70th" we have published a more extensive appreciation with the most important chess details. Quite rarely our committed problem friend has been caught in a snapshot, in my archives I still found the photo from our first general meeting at Forchheim reproduced below.

Only two days later the widely known Milano chess historian Alessandro Sanvito looked back on full seven decades. As the country’s representative for Italy (in this function supported by Luca D’Ambrosio) and a personal friend of the late Ken Whyld he has not only actively participated in quite a lot of our KWA meetings (see the events Amsterdam 2005; Turin 2006; Kórnik 2007; Venice 2008) but has also stood out as a very productive chess author. Apart from numerous articles in magazines and smaller brochures there is a whole lot of book publications from his pen, we give a selection here: Lineamenti di una bibliografia italiana degli scacchi, together with Adriano Chicco (1987); Figure di scacchi (1992); Bibliografia italiana degli scacchi (1999); L’arte degli scacchi. Catalogo a cura di Alessandro Sanvito (2000); I codici scacchistici di Giulio Cesare Polerio e Gioacchino Greco (2005/2008 – you will still find the second edition in our Announcements); as well as SCACCHI MANOSCRITTI - raccolta di antichi documenti scacchistici europei (2008). We remind here also of Alessandro’s nearly hundred-page contribution to Scacchia Ludus Vol. 1 published 2008 - "Italienische Schachmanuskripte des 11. bis 17. Jahrhunderts" [Italian Chess Manuscripts of the 11th to 17th Century]. We may still point to a further article by Alessandro Sanvito from the year 2002: "Death and Chess in Iconography" - www.italiascacchistica.com/.... In honour of his birthday a commemorative publication is planned for the next year which (like the Meissenburg "Festschrift") is supposed to be published by Refordis.

Dale A. Brandreth, – we have regularly mentioned him in our column (see particularly our appreciation from 2004), – has reached the "77" on December 17th. We are pleased that we are finally able to offer a photograph of the leader of CAISSA EDITIONS, and we have also slightly updated this publisher’s book list of own publications.

Christine Möhle is included in our birthday list as the representative of the SHLB – Regional Library of Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, she celebrated her special day just on Christmas day. She is known to have made a major contribution to the Kiel Chess Catalogue, and after the demise of the unforgotten Horst Lüders she has taken over the maintenance of the Kiel chess collection. She had already joined in our foundation meeting at Brunswick (here the photo as evidence), you may find the link to the Kiel online Catalogue on our page HOME down on the right (just like the links to the other institutional members).

Traditionally Kurt Landsberger, now honorary member of our association, brings up the rear of the yearly birthday greetings, he celebrated his 88th birthday on December 28th. We are pleased to mention that our Kurt is still enjoying a robust constitution – withstanding his old age, and that he is always prepared to take up the cudgels for "his" old Steinitz. For those who have missed to read it we refer again to the fine article by Diane Lilli from this year: A life still filled with adventure, mirth and discovery (pdf file). We wish our American friend that he still will be granted many happy years together with his beloved Anny!
[Former entries on Kurt Landsberger in December 2006 (including further links back) and 2007.]

Congratulations!

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