Persons celebrating an Anniversary in December 2004
Season's greetings to all our members!
Dear members!
Our monthly birthday column has survived one year and we have to ask the question how to proceed with it. Most of our members have been introduced once now – according to my state of knowledge in more or less detail – and in order not to repeat myself to a large extent from now on we (M.N. & R.B.) decided the following procedure to become immediately effective:
First all new members will be considered once as well as previous members who will let us know their birthday belatedly (a short mail to our secretary via our contact form will do, or directly to me – you will find my e-mail address for instance in the imprint).
Generally all jubilees ending on "5" or "0" will be included, so each birthday we know about will recur at least all 5 years. Our seniors will get a small birthday bonus – we will pay (a possibly short) tribute to all birthdays from "70" upwards.
As is generally known you can look up the previous birthday greetings at any time in our Archives.
Our first greetings go to Israel, Zacharia Kogan from Rishon Le Zion celebrated his 62nd birthday on December, 6. He has introduced himself to us as a collector and chess dealer and we are pleased to have won at least one representative of the KWA in the Near East.
A well-known personality of the US American chess scene is Dale Alden Brandreth, in Hockessin, DE he looked back on 73 years on December, 17. The trained chemical engineer (he has some university degrees – BSc, MSc, PhD) is not only a profound chess historian and an eminent collector. (Even in 1977 his collection contained about 8,000 items; in 1970 he started up a professional book trade in order to get rid of his numerous duplicates.) He will be familiar to most of us as an author, editor and publisher of high-quality chess books, particularly tournament books and biographies – so the publications which appeared at Caissa Editions, a division of Dale A. Brandreth, Books are surely a valuable addition to each chess library.
I have no bibliographical details about a few early works by Brandreth which are given in his article mentioned below: Sverdlovsk 1943 and Salzburg 1943 (limited editions; 1956?) as well as "Lasker vs. Pillsbury" and the tournament book on Montevideo 1938 (both 1958?). Some further booklets seem to have been published at his own expense: Lodz 1906 international tournament, April 15-28, 1906. (1971. – 7 leaves); The world of chess literature. (1973?. – 10 leaves); Collecting Chess Tournament Books - A Fascinating Hobby. (1977. – 10 leaves); Collecting perspectives from a collector, dealer. (s.a. – 5p.). Widely known however should be his work The Unknown Capablanca (London, 1975; New York, 1993), co-authored by David Hooper, a collection of 203 Capablanca games from minor matches, simultaneous exhibitions etc. which were largely unknown up to then.
Brandreth’s informative article Some Reminiscences of a Chess Book Collection cannot be left unmentioned here, it was included in the jubilee book Bonus Socius (published 1977 on the occasion of the 75th birthday of Meindert Niemeijer): in it he reviewed his chess development and at the same time the reader learns quite a lot about the driving forces of his collecting activities.
We remember very well – namely from this year’s Forchheim meeting – the Steinitz biographer Kurt Landsberger, he will complete his 84th year on December, 28. You could read something about him even a year ago at this place, meanwhile we have included his two magnificent books in our pages Publications and we have also recorded at least in pictures his spontaneous speech at our General Meeting which was greeted with much applause. Over the American winter he usually prefers the mild climate in the southeast of the USA – therefore we will send kind greetings to Florida: ad multos annos!
This year’s last birthday greetings go to the Californian town of Pleasanton where Yakov Zusmanovich can celebrate the New Year’s Eve party twice: he will be 45 years "young" on December, 31. The passionate collector of chess literature was born in Moscow and he lived there for nearly 30 years. After graduating from Moscow University of Civil Engineering he worked as an air pollution control engineer, there are several publications by him in this field. Later on in the USA he changed his profession and he became a mainframe computer programmer. There is still no chess book from his pen, but his plans, investigations and collecting activities are about a book project which will be devoted to those Jewish chess players who survived the Holocaust. Good luck with your project, Yakov!
Congratulations to all!