A Century of Chess: Mannheim 1914
The “unfinished tournament” has become a part of chess lore.
The tournament was the biannual German chess congress, which, befitting the pre-war spirit of international cooperation, was really just a very strong masters’ tournament held in a German city but with little emphasis on German nationality. Alekhine, who was rapidly becoming a world championship candidate - just off his impressive third-place showing at the St Petersburg tournament - put together one of the dominating performances that would become so commonplace over the next two decades. After the eleventh round (of seventeen), he led with 9.5 points.
Vidmar was, in his quiet way, also having a superlative result and trailed Alekhine by only a point, with Spielmann a half-point back of him, followed by Breyer, Réti, and Marshall, and with Janowski, Tarrasch, and Duras underperforming.
The eleventh round was held on August 1, 1914 - the day Germany sent its ultimatum to Russia and with Austria-Hungary already in a state of war with Serbia and Russia. Even at that very late date, newspapers continued to report that the tournament was "going on without a hitch" and that "it may be taken for granted that the masters will not allow themselves to be disturbed by the war situation." But, on August 2 - with Alekhine slated to play Vidmar and first place at stake - the players received an announcement that the tournament was called off. Marshall recalled "how surprisingly quickly Mannheim became infested with soldiers - who seemed to spring up from all over."
The majority of the German and Austro-Hungarian players headed straight off to join the war effort. "Shortly after our game, my opponent [Walter John] bade me farewell and went off to the front," wrote Marshall laconically. The players from neutral countries were told, as Marshall recalled, "to make themselves scarce" and "broke for cover." Meanwhile, the French and Russians were detained. They were held in Mannheim, then moved to Baden-Baden, and eventually to Triberg. When Alekhine returned to Russia a year later, he gave an interview describing their barbaric treatment by the perfidious Germans. “It was a complete nightmare of horror, a terrible dream," he said. "There can be no account, no description of the moral and physical suffering that I endured and that many of my colleagues, the Russian chess players, are still experiencing."
Alekhine described the detainees being kicked and beaten by rifle butts while in transit for an overnight stay at a military prison - one of the blows leaving him with a permanent scar on his leg. He spoke of the "insolent jailer" he had during a two-week stint at a civilian prison and of "the food that was worse than what is fed to dogs." His descriptions changed somewhat, however, in a later interview he gave in which he recalled his "idyllic detention with meals and gossip being brought three times a day by our overseer and his daughter."
In 1915 - the details are still a little hazy on how this happened - Janowski, Alekhine, and three of the other Russian players went to Switzerland and returned home from there. Romanovsky (who had been playing in one of the haupttuniers) was released directly to Russia for health reasons. Flamberg was allowed to return to Poland in 1916 after the Germans captured his place of residence. The other five Russians - Bogoljubow, Rabinovich, Maliutin, Weinstein, Selesniev - spent the rest of the war in Triberg. This was a bit of a precarious existence. They were dependent on funding sent from chess communities in Russia and Britain - and failure to receive funding carried the risk of being relocated to a work camp for internees. But it seems like it could have been worse. They were able to organize eight tournaments amongst themselves over the course of the war - although, as Edward Winter astutely notes, that number seems small given the circumstances. "What else did they have to do?" he asks.
On the whole, World War I affected the Mannheim players less than might have been expected. After the war, virtually all of them - with the exception of Duras - picked up right where they had left off. Upon the resumption of peace, Frank Marshall was astonished to have shipped to him a trunk - with all its contents intact - that he had lost on the frantic train ride out of Mannheim in 1914. Out of all the participants, the war may have most altered the life trajectory of Efim Bogoljubow. He settled down in Triberg, married a local woman, and became so thoroughly nationalized that he was deeply sympathetic to Hitler during the 1930s.
From a chessic point of view, Mannheim is really notable as the proper début of Bogoljubow as well as Richard Réti. The war would prove to be a real boost to both of their chess careers. Réti was assigned to clerical work at an outpost near Serbia. He was lucky enough to have superior officers who were chess fans and both supported his studies and allowed him to take part in tournaments. Meanwhile, Bogoljubow was an avid participant in the Triberg tournaments, which he dominated. In 1919-1920, with the first tournaments after the war, Bogoljubow and Réti emerged suddenly among the world's elite - but their talent was on display with their strong performances at Mannheim. The tournament was also something of a breakthrough for Gyula Breyer, another World War I non-combatant. He recalled, upon seeing the effusive way Bogoljubow's friends complimented him for his victory over Breyer, realizing for the first time that he, Breyer, was considered an international star. Among the other participants, Janowski had the satisfaction of being the sole player to defeat Alekhine.
Sources: Two of the best write-ups on Mannheim are by chess.com regulars. Batgirl's is here and simaginfan's here. Anthony Gillam has a whole book on the interned Russians, which is behind a paywall. There's a in-depth discussion of his book here and here. Edward Winter discusses unanswered questions on the internments here. Frank Marshall discusses the tournament and its aftermath in Marshall's Best Games of Chess. Alekhine annotates several of his games in My Best Games of Chess. Jimmy Adams thoroughly covers Breyer's tournament in Gyula Breyer: Chess Revolutionary.
