Impact of Genius

Richard E. Fauber was a longtime Sacramento, California master-strength chess player, director, chess journalist and author, especially active during the 1970s and 1980s. With a masters degree in Economic History from Berkely, he was a part-time instructor on staff in the History Dept. at Sacramento State College for a short period of time. He mainly earned his living as a financial investor. From 1971 to 1989 he was also the chess editor for the Sacramento Bee.

I came across his name talking with some California players. I read some of his writing in various California chess periodicals/newsletters and found his style appealing. I had even put two interviews he conducted (with Bent Larsen and Boris Spassky) on chess. com:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/an-interview-with-the-lone-wolf 
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/a-conversation-with-boris-spassky 

Fauber also wrote a book, published in 1992, that sounded rather interesting, so I bought a copy: Impact of Genius: 500 years of Grandmaster Chess. According to his obituary (he died in 2013) "In it he tells the story of the greatest players in the modern era and places chess in the context of the evolution of culture in Europe and America. The book with its unique format was very well-received."

Since I figured no one here would be reading this book anytime soon (or ever), I selected a small segment from his chapter "The Diffusion of Theory" to give people a taste.

This story takes place in Germany in the early 1800s and shows how this area went from being a chess wasteland to the leader of chess theory in a few decades...and it's all attributable to a loose group of players referred to as the Pleiades.

The Pleiades
Advanced Booking

The Germans pointed the path to more compendious opening knowledge. The Napoleonic Wars had given birth to a feeling of Germanity among those who spoke its language. Awakened to a sense of loyalty to more than just a myriad of parochial principles, they began to make strides to catch up with the world in cosmopolitan endeavors. History, economics, and mathematics were provinces where thorough German scholarship became the standard of excellence during the 19th century.

The painstaking German scholarship also spilled over into chess where no German had attained distinction before. Prussia stood preeminent in German politics following the defeat of Napoleon. The stronger German players began to gravitate to Berlin where the "Pleiades" [die Plejaden] emerged. These were seven strong players, likened by their contemporaries to the seven stars in the constellation. Der Lasa, one of their number, criticized the sobriquet -- pointing out that the constellation shone only dimly. Modesty was never handmaid to chess players.

Among these acolytes of chess no one was more devoted than Rudolf von Bilguer, who poured a lifetime of chess energy into four short years. Born in 1813, von Bilguer was the son of a Mecklenburg colonel, who commanded the garrison in the city of Schwerin. Naturally, the father expected his son to follow a military career, and Paul earned a commission. On a training assignment to Berlin in the middle 1830s Bilguer discovered the game. Chess was beginning to thrive at the Berlin Chess Club of Julius Mendheim and among the Blumengarten Circle organized by Ludwig Bledow.

Described s of middle height with prominent, sharply etched facial features, von Bilguer knew a lifetime of poor health. Incipient tuberculosis caused him to resign his army commission in 1837, but he did not rusticate to cough quietly in the garden. Instead, he threw himself completely into the life of chess. When he was not playing, he was analyzing.

His light-hearted, sensitive temperament endeared him to the other Pleiades. There was Bledow, who supplemented his organizing by founding the magazine Deutsche Schachzeitung in 1843. Bernhard Horowitz was a bad painter but a composer of elegant endings. His Chess Studies, published in London in 1851, was a landmark of the endgame art. He always envied the painting ability of his colleague Karl Schorn, but Schorn was a mere punching bag for the other six.

In addition to donating his name to a line in the King's Gambit, Wilhelm Hanstein kept the Deutsche Schachzeitung alive following Bledow's death in 1846. His colleague, Carl Mayet, registered the first international victory for the rising German school when he defeated the Hungarian master Josef Szen in a short investigation of the openings as match in 1839.

Tassilo von Heyderbrand und der Lasa lived a life which contrasted sharply with Bilguer's. He enjoyed scandalously good health (1819-1899) and gave up chess for a career as a diplomat. At the height of his career, he served as ambassador to Argentina. He also amassed a library of more than 2,200 chess titles and published a history of chess among several chess works. Of all the Pleiades, der Lasa was the most successful in his sporadic participation in international competition.

It was also der Lasa who urged von Bilguer to the analytical labors which won him immortality. German chess lagged far behind chess in England, France and Italy in the early 19th century. The Pleiades ascribed the prevailing low standard of play to the absence of a native German chess literature.

Bilguer set out on an exhaustive investigation of the openings as English, French and Italian analysis had recommended them. Looking to the East, he also exchanged ideas with Carl von Jaenisch and Alexander Petrov, who were lighting the chess beacon in Russia. Most helpful in this titanic undertaking were the games collections of William Lewis. Here were real games, serious contests rather than airy suggestions.

Stoll, there were innumerable holes in the openings where variations had been insufficiently tested in practical play among themselves. Most of the games they have left us were contested to strengthen the analysis in Bilguer's Handbuch des Schachspiels.

The word went on, but by the summer of 1840 the coughing, rheumy Bilguer had gone blind as well. His decline accelerated, and he died on September 16, his work unfinished. Der Lasa took up the task and published the Handbuch in 1843/ No opening book has been the same since. It has become necessary that practical examples justify the conclusion that "White stands better." The inclination to play "by the book," which this giant compendium made passible, means playing be rote; but writing the Handbuch meant giving moves the critical scrutiny which comes from extensive practice.

Bilguer's career extended only four years, so the Handbuch became both his monument and epitaph. During those four years, however, he gained a reputation for dashing attacking play --perhaps to compensate for the poverty of his physical and financial resources by richness of the imagination. He played as though each day might be his last.

Bilguer spared no expense when he saw a chance to bring the enemy to ground by a mating attack. Against der Lase he offered pawns and pieces in profusion to create a delightful attack:

Der Lasa has his share of brilliant games. This one features a picturesque mate. Black cannot guard against a vacuum cleaner attack which sucks his King to its doom:

Despite convincing evidence to the contrary, Howard Staunton still claimed to be the world's finest player when the following game was played. This original conception provider der Lasa with the margin of victory in the match. Staunton plucked a pawn like a rse from der Lasa's garden only to be fatally pricked by the ensuing counterattack:

I remember Richard from the Sacramento Chess Club.  Strong player that was also a very nice and friendly man.  Loved his column in the paper.

Thanks. I haven't heard a bad thing about him.  And I am enjoying his book.

When the Koltanowski Silver Medal was first given out in 1980 by the USCF, Richard Fauber received one of them for his support of chess, particularly for his years of work with the CalChess Masters Open.

wow, this is a looooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggg blog

@batgirl, thanks!

it really wasn't meant for those with zero attention span.

Thanks for reading.

Some good, romantic chess to bring in the new year.  Thanks, Sarah, and a happy new year to you.

Nice stuff! Had never heard of the book. Not sure about the notes to the first game though!?. Didn't know Horowitz was thought of as a bad painter. Big thank you!!. Take care 

Thanks, Rob. If I'm nothing else, I'm a Romantic.  Happy New Years to you. I hope you're doing well. 

Hi!  I don't necessarily agree totally with everything he says, but I like the way he says it. 

Thats considered long? 

How sad...sign of the times.

It's a veritable "War and Peace."

You should have written this for the audience its intended.  As the saying goes: Know your audience.  Here is how it should have been written.

Bruh...

Dude what?

There was this dude that played chess.\

Epic!

He wrote books and articles for magazines and newspapers.

Whats a book? 

I dont know.

Whats a magazine?

Beats me. 

Whats a news paper?

Good question. 

Wanna play bullet?

OK!

Awesome.

Interesting article.  Really nice games, especially the final one.  Thanks for posting.  Have a happy 2022.

Hi, Happy New Year!

I see the Handbuch in German, but not in English. Anyhow, I figure Tartakower's "The Hypermodern Game" more than compensates for not having this one.

By the way, good games. Thanks so much.

Nice post!

Thanks for another enjoyable post.