There were times when he was almost as well known as Albert Einstein: Emanuel Lasker of Germany, the only chess world champion and defended his title for 27 years. In 2018, its 150th anniversary. Birthday.
Record-breaking world champion: the chess player Emanuel Lasker
“Chess is, above all, a fight!” the motto of Emanuel Lasker was the beginning of the 20th century. Century, the chess world is dominated. After he was defeated in 1894, his predecessor, the Austrian Wilhelm Steinitz, kept Lasker for 27 years the world champion title, which is still a record. For Lasker, who sat with a cigar on Board, the game was on the 64 fields of a sporting match: “I fight, as long as my opponent can make a mistake,” he once said. With this pragmatic attitude Lasker made at the time by the chess scene in just friends – saw the traditional Board game, but as an intellectual Passion and less as a Sport.
Lasker was of its time just in advance: He wanted to score, no matter how. The current world chess champion, the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, his games today, similar to. To Lasker’s professional attitude was that he was a reasonable payment for his work on the chess Board, fought. He thought it to be a higher prize money, but even tried to copyright the moves of a chess game to enforce – which he managed but.
Career Aspirations: University Professor
Emanuel Lasker: Not only chess in my head
At the level of professionalism, in terms of chess: Actually, Lasker had the end of the 19th century. Century other plans for his life. 24. December 1868 born as the son of a Jewish Cantor in the West Pomeranian Village of Berlin (now Poland), he was fixed not to play to the chess. His brother Bertold had taught him as a pastime, when he was twelve years old. However, that kept him in the opinion of his parents to his school duties.
After the Gymnasium he studied Emanuel Lasker mathematics in Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg, obtained his doctorate and lectured at universities in England and the United States. Even today, mathematics are concerned-students with a named after him Decomposition theorem for Prime numbers. A science career as a Professor seemed possible, and was sought by Lasker. But it came to his never Regret. “Only people who devote themselves to a cause, bring in it Large about”, wrote he once was but even to this currency.
Chess professional as a Plan B
In 1891, under Lasker broke off his studies to go to as a professional chess player to London. However, when he, due to his success on the chessboard of the world was known, pursued Lasker in parallel to his academic and artistic interests. Of the mathematics, he moved to philosophy, is the author of several books, but also in this discipline, the desired high-school-Professor. Lasker, his friend Albert Einstein attested to a “unique independence of the personality”, did not fit with his many talents in the German academic world at the beginning of the 20th century. Century. Especially since the polyglot Lasker was still in other areas: Together with his brother, occasionally, with the poet Else Lasker-schüler was married, he wrote an expressionist piece of theatre – but it got quickly forgotten.
After Lasker in 1921, lost the world title to the Cubans Raul Capablanca, he withdrew more and more from the sport of Chess. He, however, remained in the Public presence, published articles and gave lectures, in which he was critical of the political developments of his time, and, for example, demanded to strengthen the fight against the pervasive anti-Semitism.
In 1921, chased the Cuban José Raúl Capablanca (left) and Emanuel Lasker for the world championship title from
Escape from Germany
The year 1933 was for Lasker a break. He quickly realized that the glory would not preserve as Germany’s largest chess players from persecution by the national socialists. He left Germany with his wife, first in the direction of the Netherlands, then in the Soviet Union. There Lasker sat down once more to the chess Board, not least in order to earn as an Emigrant in retirement money. His third place without a single defeat – a top-class chess tournament in 1935, in Moscow at the age of 67 years shall apply in chess circles today as a most remarkable performance.
But also in Moscow, the Lasker’s were not sure. As its patron, the Soviet Minister of justice, the Stalinist purges, fell victim, not returned to the couple from a trip to the USA and remained in New York. There Lasker 1941 died.
Thinkers and thinking athletes
Shortly before his death, Lasker had to take the floor again: in 1940, he published in New York a pamphlet entitled “Community of the Future”, in which he campaigned for tolerance, and proposals to fight unemployment and the creation of a Jewish state proposed in Alaska. Emanuel Lasker has always seen itself as a thinking athlete and thinker and as a liberal citizen of the world. In post-war Germany, Emanuel Lasker was outside the chess scene quickly forgotten. The modest grave at the Jewish cemetery Beth Olom in the New York city borough of Queens today is found only with some effort.