Persons celebrating an Anniversary in February 2005
At the beginning we would like to add a special birthday to our last greetings as our member Martin Ramsauer became father for the second time on January, 17th – this time of a daughter. Congratulations to the Ramsauer family on this happy event!
The Russian grandmaster Yuri Lvovich Averbakh looked back on a very full and most varied chess career when he turned 83 on February, 8th. On the occasion of his last birthday we already emphasized his contribution to the chess world; we would like to add his organizational commitment for the USSR Chess Federation whose president he was from 1972 to 1977. Only about one year ago a classic fundamental work from his pen, Was man über das Endspiel wissen muß (Heidelberg, 1979 und 1986), was published as an electronic book on CD-ROM (under the title Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge), a detailed review has been supplied by Steve Higgins at ChessCafe.com (a German translation appeared in Computer-Schach & Spiele 1/2004, p. 10-12); you will get further information about it at Chess Multimedia.
Only one day later our Spanish member Miquel Artigas celebrated his 51st birthday. It is thanks to Josep Alió’s last year’s information that we know a little about him, we will quote it here: "By the way, on December 14th, 2004, there was a "Spanish KWA meeting" in Sabadell, at Miquel Artigas’ home. We met José Antonio Garzón (Valencia), Miquel Artigas (Sabadell) and Josep Alió (Tarragona). It was a nice and very satisfying day, enjoying the fantastic Artigas collection and talking about chess, its books and its history. Artigas wants to find all the Spanish chess material published so far. Now he is buying all new Spanish chess books and magazines that are published. He's only 50 years old and in the future (today?) his library will be (is) a reference in Spanish (and especially Catalan) chess material for all chess collectors and historians." (Josep Alió) The photo shows our Spanish trio on the occasion of this meeting:
The first person celebrating an anniversary in this month is our founding member Harald E. Balló, he looked back on half a century on February, 11th. He is surely well-known worldwide as a chess bibliophile (possessing the second largest collection of chess literature in Germany) and as a chess historian ("Schach-Zettel"), for further details we may refer to his interesting homepage. In the past he has dealt intensively with the history of the German Chess Federation (DSB) which led to his last year’s book publication: Geschichte des Deutschen Schachbundes 1861-1945 – we will soon include this book in our section "Publications of our Members". It shouldn’t be left unmentioned that Harald Balló is additionally very committed in organizational work at both association and club level, he is the president of the Hessian Chess Association as well as the chairman of his chess club, the "Vereinigte Schachgesellschaft 1880 Offenbach/M." (United Chess Society 1880 Offenbach/M.). Naturally he is particularly integrated into the 125th anniversary of his club facing him now and into the forthcoming festivities, details are linked in the News of the Month at our page HOME!
Jes Knudsen from the Danish town of Fredriksvaerk celebrated his 50th birthday as well, his time had come on February, 26th. Unfortunately we don’t know much about our Danish chess friend apart from the fact that he also belongs to the well-known collector species – we have spotted him during the Klittich auction in June, 2004 where he was recorded in a picture, too. At that time he suggested organizing a regional meeting of the Scandinavian collectors – maybe we will hear about it some time!?
Congratulations to all!