Wiener Schachzeitung Photographs. Part One. Something To Help History Bloggers.

Afternoon Guys! There is some nice stuff here, so even if you are not a chess history buff, you may enjoy it.

Recently - and I am delighted to be able to say it - there has been an upsurge in the use of the chess.com blogger facilities to post good material on chess history. Welcome along guys - it's great to have you join those of us who have been doing this for a while.

I genuinely mean that. There is no competition going on - just the sharing of material and knowledge. Love it!! Between us we can make the site somewhere to go to learn about chess history.

One issue that comes up for those without book and magazine  resources is photographs.

Apart from the fact that I just love my old chess pictures, they make an article more interesting visually.

There is nothing more intimidating to the casual reader than seeing paragraph after paragraph of text, and at the end of the day the object of the exercise - often many, many hours work - is to get people to take an interest in the subject matter. So. Let's throw in a cropped image at this point - Reti in 1907, which is one of 2 nice early images that I have of him.

Now - the problem many face is finding good images to use on the internet. A google image search will usually churn out various repetitions of the same old material - go look for Neumann for example - a dozen versions of him in a hat. The Bradshaw photographs from Hastings 1895 are wonderful, but not exactly new material.

With them you also have the problem of copyrighted material - NEVER use Winter's images, for example. If you are not sure, don't use it!! And if you do, credit it!!!!

Along with that you will find stuff that is unreliable - no sources given - or just downright rubbish.

One example that irritates me is Alexander M'Donnell. THERE ARE NO KNOWN PICTURES OF HIM!! Go search and you will find a couple.

 Nope - that's not him! And there are loads of the Rev. G.A. MacDonnell that you will be told are him. Funniest is this one - taken from Chess Life Pictures - written by one G.A.MacDonnell, complete with source, it is supposedly Alexander M'Donnell!!

O.K. Having time on my hands, I thought that I would start a little something to help and post some bone fide images, with proper sources, to provide some images.

I am well aware that being a'Top Blogger', when I post an article it goes in to a rotation system for front page coverage. When I post something, it means that someone else's work falls off, and loses coverage. ( Some couldn't care less about that, but I do!!) So, I will spread material out over time.

There is a huge amount in Marco's Wiener Schachzeitung, so will start there and give pictures from the 1905-1907 volumes.

Let me know if you think I am doing something worthwhile and interesting, or if you think it's all very dull and that I am wasting my time! As always, all comments and suggestions welcomed.

Lets start. Volume and page numbers included, I will give them as they come out of my files. Hope you like them and can use them!!

Note that some of the pictures were published at a later date than they were originally taken..

That's it for now - hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures, and that some of you will be able to use them in the future.

Take care everyone.