General Chess History

This thread will eventually be filled with interesting tidbits from Chess History. Post any stories or facts you find interesting here!

I just published an article in the Article Section of Chess.com called "of Cafés, Politics, Arts and Chess."  It's a sister article to my previous one "Berlin Schach-Cafés."

Many years ago I made a site called Chess and the Surrealists.  The site explains the relationship between the Dadaist/Surrealists of the first half of the 20th century and chess with the famous 1944 "Imagery of Chess" show acting as the anchor.

Frederick Kiesler, the avant-garde architect, was a contributor to that show and he is mentioned in the catalogue.   However there were 3 persons who contributed but were not listed : Julien Levy who hosted the show. Xenia Cage, the wife of listed contributor John Cage, and Steffi Kiesler, the wife of Frederick Kiesler.

Below is Steffi's contribution, a montage, along with some explanations:

Steffi Kiesler - early 1940's

Stephanie (Stefani, Stefi, Steffi ) Frischer was born in Austria in 1897. As a philology student. she married theater and art-exhibition designer, Frederick John Kiesler, in Vienna in 1920. In 1926, they emigrated to New York where Frederick obtained an architects license in 1930. Frederick Kiesler went on to become quite famous for his avant-garde designs. Steffi, meanwhile, became a librarian (in 1927) in the French and German section of the New York Public Library, a position she held for 32 years. Steffi Kiesler died in 1963.

Steffi Kiesler's two contributions to the show were a pair of photmontages - the only photomontages (which were mainstays of the Surrealist movement) and, besides that of André Breton, the only submission that included personal text.

The above text (written by Kiesler) reads:

Ströbeck is a village near Magdehurg in which everyone of the 1252 inhabitants (Census 1933) plays chess.

The houses are ornamented with chess designs. The street pavements acquire aspects of chess tables. Trees are cut to resemble chess figures. Natives walk in pairs, always ready for a game. Each year at the Easter examinations the school organizes a chess race with six chess boards as prizes.

In the year 1011 a Count Gunnelin was made prisoner by Arnold von Alherstadt and locked in the Tower. To distract his jailers and also pass the time, the Count taught them a new game. He took a hoard, divided it in 64 fields, sculpted the pieces—and soon it struck the village like a real epi­demic. For centuries its chief industry was, of course, the manufacturing of chess hoards.


Since 1011 the Ströbeckians acquired an aptitude for the game, but they never achieved exceptional skill. Yet, once, at a tournament, when the two famous masters, Lasker and Tarrasch, put their talents against the Strobeckians, three of them left the battlefield—victoriously. All three belonged to the same family: the proprietor of the only hotel “To the Chess Game”, his aunt and his Grandmother.

         *******************        Steffi Kiesler
 

For the record, there doesn't seem to be any substance to the story in the last paragraph that three members of a family from Ströbeck beat both Lasker and Tarrasch. In fact, the game of chess popular in that village is actually a variant of the game.

The book,  "Imagery of Chess Revisited " expresses the sentiment that "Kiesler's description of Ströbeck as a “chess village” is consistent with those found in recent studies by chess scholars J. C. Hallman and Marilyn Yalom."  The  real fact is that Schachdorf Ströbeck was known about a century before the original "Imagery of Chess" show and written about by H. R. J. Murray in his seminal, "A History of Chess,"  published in 1913.

For more on Schachdorf Ströbeck

The top picture is a still from a film entitled The Moon and Sixpence, adapted from a play of the same name by Somerset Maugham.

[Albert Lewin, the harvard-trained poet-turned-movie-producer who was one of Man Ray’s most devoted West Coast patrons. Lewin, like Walter Arensherg, Duchamp’s patron, was a devoted chess player.137 He managed to incorporate at least one chess scene in each of his films and commissioned works of modern art for inclusion as well. In the photograph, a chess game is taking place at the center of a garden café, with the actor Herbert Marshall making his move. Beneath the photograph a typewritten label on translucent paper reads simply “Herbert Marshall.” Diagonally below the right-hand corner of the photograph of Herbert Marshall is a small news magazine photograph of the department- store magnate Marshall Field III, at a chessboard, with the caption “He invaded.”] -  from Imagery of Chess Revisited

The two photographs below feature Marshall Broz Tito, dictator of Yugoslavia. One caption reads: “The Marshal’s chess game is conservative, unlike his military tactics which are often daring.”