Need help with old German

I found the book itself...

I love old German books. I can't read them, but they do use algebraic notation.

Yeah, I'm looking through it now.  :-D

Thanks.

Awsome topic though.

Weirdly, the only wikipedia that has an article on him is the Spanish one.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Wilhelm_Koch

Also wrote on Botany  "La abreviatura Koch se emplea para indicar a Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Koch como autoridad en la descripción y clasificación científica de los vegetales" - I guess that means he did something important in plant taxonomy? Maybe notation?

I had found his botany book while looking for his schachcodex. A lot of old chess players/writers were highly versed in other areas.  

So maybe his botany notation was influenced by chess notation? It'd sort of make sense to me that if he was into chess notation, he'd transfer his ideas.

Could be the other way around also, but it would be more funny to me if chess notation influenced botany notation than vice versa. :)

This title page reads:

Codex

der

Schachspielkunst,

nach den

Musterspielen und Regeln

der größten Meister,

in einer

für die Erleichterung des Selbstunterrichts

bequemen Bezeichnungsart und Anordnung

entworfen von

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Koch

Very freely translated this approximates:

Codex

of

the art of playing chess

according to the

model games (sample games?) and rules

of the

greatest masters

in a

comfortable nomenclature (form of notation?) and order (of presentation)

for easier self-teaching

designed by (outlined by?)

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Koch

Well, Germany and Russia have both always used algebraic notation. Italy, France, Spain and England used various notations, mostly of a descriptive form. I'm not sure about Holland or Denmark.  I'm guessing slavic countries followed the Russian style, but I don't really know. Petroff played and lived for a while in Poland so he would have had a lot of influence in that area of the world, I imagine. Stamma came from Turkey in the early 18th century and he introduced algebraic notation to the West.

Actually Koch seems to have been criticized by fellow Germans of his time for using the algebraic notation, so at least in the beginning of the 19th century it seems to have been unusual. But I don't know much about old German chess books (I prefer modern ones).

I haven't see a German book on chess not in algebraic. I've looked at old ones including and before Biguer's Handbuch, such as the one by Koch, Silberschmidt's 1826 "Die neu entdeckten Geheimnisse im Gebiete des Schachspiels" , Anderssen's book of problems, "Aufgaben für Schachspieler," later works by Dufresne, Zukertort, etc. ... all algebraic.

Ok, that makes sense. Never heard of this type of notation, seems very confusing to me.

According to this pdf http://www.kwabc.org/archive/Texte/JFW_Koch_Tagungsband.pdf

It was a guy called Wildt that made the aritmetic in 1802, his own Wildt'-ersion of it.

Koch then for some reason used Wildt's notation in 1828. van der Linde that I'm quitingg here didn't like the change and thinks WiIdt's notation sucks.

I read them with difficulty and a dictionary. The notation is easy and the Handbuch (1843) is worth reading.

german chess is poisoning european chess, 'for good'

Does anyone know what this is?

Here is a nice Knight's Tour decription by von Hirsch Silberschmidt:

I appreciate the explanation and the offer to translate. But that's too much work for what seems just a relative of chess - too peripheral.  I knew the title said War Game, but that's as far as I could get.  I thought the 11 x 11 square board was quite unusual - normally boards are in even numbers of squares.

Thanks so much!

.. and the letter 'j' is missing! I wonder why.