A Century of Chess: Ståhlberg-Nimzowitsch 1934
Age mellows everybody — even, apparently, Aron Nimzowitsch — and it’s a great surprise to come across class and grace in Nimzowitsch’s comments to his losing effort in the 1934 Ståhlberg match. Actually, the match must have been mortifying to Nimzowitsch — evidence that, at age 47, he was finished.
"In the second half of the match, I was shown the truth," he wrote afterwards. "Namely, it illustrated that my weakness in the openings was greater than expected, and neither was I consistently the stronger player in terms of technique."
Nimzowitsch opened the match in great form. Game 1 is a Nimzowitsch classic — playing on the wing in the openings and then gradually taking over the game with a strategic pawn sacrifice.
Ståhlberg equalized in Game 3, but Nimzowitsch seemed to show that he was in another class with a smooth win in Game 4. Game 5 was really the pivotal game of the match, with Stahlberg successfully adapting to Nimzowitsch's Nimzo-Indian and achieving a winning position out of one of Nimzowitsch's pet openings. With his usual gift for the hilarious, Nimzowitsch wrote of the position in the early middlegame, "Suddenly Black sees himself driven into the water in a light kayak with masses of drift ice striking him on all sides. One can't endure the collision and yet the collision is unavoidable."
Game 6 seemed to be headed for a quick draw until Nimzowitsch blundered a piece in the ending. Ståhlberg put the match away in the messy Game 7 where he kept emerging a step ahead in tactical complications.
This is, sad as it is to say, very nearly our last glimpse of Aron Nimzowitsch. In a just world he would have had his crack at a world championship match somewhere around 1930 or ‘31, but with the combination of the Depression and Alekhine’s dominance the match never take place. He was inactive for much of the ‘30s and had a health collapse in late 1934 from which he never recovered. He died the next year.
Nimzowitsch, in his mellow period, was full of praise for Ståhlberg, of whom he wrote, “The sharpest move would rarely escape his attention, and his attacks were full of surprising twists. I therefore have no hesitation in stating that despite his young years, Gideon Ståhlberg must be included in the corps of Grandmasters." At 26, then, Ståhlberg joined the ranks of the talented young guns of the era — alongside Botvinnik, Reshevsky, Fine, Lilienthal, Stoltz, with Keres soon to follow and with the older generation, Bogoljubow, Nimzowitsch, Tartakower, Vidmar, Spielmann declining as if in tandem. Based on this match it would have been reasonable to expect more sustained successes from Ståhlberg. He went on to be a bona fide international grandmaster, and twice a candidate, but it was his misfortune that his likely peak coincided with the war years and it seems he didn’t have quite the single-minded dedication to vault himself into the very first rank of players.
Sources: Chessgames.com has an excellent write-up on the match. Nimzowitsch's quotes are translated there by Chessical. The massive biographies of Nimzowitsch and Stahlberg that could be expected to have more on the match aren't available online. The photo is from Edward Winter's article on Nimzowitsch.
