Persons celebrating an Anniversary in May 2004

This time our Finnish chess friend Kimmo Välkesalmi is at the top of our birthday list, he turned 43 on 1st May and thereby is the "junior of the month". The chess IM and collector runs an antiquarian bookshop at Helsinki and chess is the clear focus in his online bookshop (see our page Links), an additional area of his interest is "cinema and film".

In the name of all members but also of all other chess friends who visit our website regularly I would like to congratulate heartily our webmaster Ralf Jürgen Binnewirtz on his 53rd birthday which he celebrated on May 3. It is owing to his tireless and professional work that we possess such a rich and well-kept Internet site.
My friend Ralf is a remarkable phenomenon (to me):
On the one hand he has an immense specialized knowledge of chess history and (naturally) he possesses a select collection on subjects in this field which he knows to use very skilfully for investigations. (Our German members will remember the chess puzzle competitions in "Schach-Report" and in "Schach" where Ralf Binnewirtz was very successful as a solver and later on as a puzzle supplier.) Moreover he is a pronounced specialist in the subject "artistic chess" – which is among other things shown by his unique book on "Schlagabtausch im Räuberschach" (Exchange of blows in Losing Chess) and his worth reading Internet article on "Collectors in the field of artistic chess" (in German). Ralf always pursued artistic chess as a solver and not as a composer; it is the main emphasis of his fine collection.
On the other hand Ralf never played a single tournament game and only occasionally correspondence chess (with friends) and he never became a member of a common chess club – hence we complement each other perfectly in our cooperation. (Michael Negele)
Postscript:
At this point Ralf’s twin brother Bodo Binnewirtz should not be left without congratulations, time and again he as an Anglist has given us valuable assistance in translation.

The same day the well-known problemist Günter Büsing turned 57. He is heavily involved in the board activities of the "Schwalbe" (German Association for Problem Chess), since about 10 years he has held the position of a second chairman and secretary. In addition he has acted many a time as a judge for chess compositions and he is also active in the international arena [in the subcommission "Codex" of the PCCC (Permanent Commission of the FIDE for Chess Compositions), at the moment as spokesman]. One cannot hold it against him that he has nearly no time left for composing let alone other chess activities, after all he has to pay considerable tribute to his profession (European Patent Office Munich) and his family, too.

Our next greetings go to the "Green Isle" of Ireland where Tim Harding celebrated his 56th birthday on May 6. The Dubliner is internationally so well-known – as editor of the magazine Chess Mail, as columnist at the Internet ChessCafe ("The Kibitzer") and as author of numerous publications (more than 20 books and CDs) – that we hardly need to introduce him. His next book, a sequel to his excellent "64 Great Chess Games" bearing the title "50 Golden Chess Games" is announced for May-June 2004, please find more detailed information on his website.

In the Swedish north we say hello to our chess friend and collector Calle (Carl-Eric) Erlandsson, he looked back on whole 62 years on May 20. The activities of his chess life are so variable and extensive that we can only offer them here in a separate file – Calle himself has made his Curriculum Vitae available to us.

Four days later Dusan Vukovic was next in line, our country’s representative of Yugoslavia celebrated his 57th birthday on May 24. Above all he is known as a chess dealer who attends also to the field of chess stamps and motifs.

In closing our May series we would like to congratulate chess friend Bernd Segebarth, he completed his 59th year on May 27. Located in the German north-east (Pingelshagen, near Schwerin) he is familiar to us as a collector of chess books and as a frequent visitor to the Klittich-Pfankuch auctions.

Congratulations to all!