Mannheim 1914 chess tournament

The following participants played in the Main tournament (Hauptturnier A):

• from the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Lajos Asztalos (Hungary) and Karel Opočenský (Bohemia)
• from the Russian Empire: Fedor Bogatyrchuk (Ukraine), Boris Maljutin, Ilya Rabinovich, and Alexey Selezniev, all from Russia
• from the German Empire: Carl Ahues, Wilhelm Hilse, Oscar Tenner, Wilhelm Schönmann, and B. Studt (Germany)
• from Switzerland: Hans Duhm (Germany), Walter Henneberger (Switzerland)
• from Netherlands: Willem Schelfhout (Netherlands)
• from Australia: Gunnar Gundersen (Norway)
• from Romania: Sigmund Herland (Romania)
• from the Ottoman Empire: B. Hallegua (Turkey).

The Hauptturnier B started with five preliminary groups of 10 players each. The two winner groups comprised 9 players each and completed their nine rounds respectively.

The first winner group was won by Julius Brach (Brno, Moravia), 6 (out of 8) points, ahead of Peter Yurdansky and Peter Romanovsky (both from Russia) and František Schubert (Mlada Boleslav, Bohemia), 5 points each. The following players were G.J. van Gelder (4½) (Netherlands), and C. Thönes (3½) (Germany), Salomon Szapiro (Lodz, Poland), H. Thelen (3 each) and P. Müller (1) (both from Germany).

The second winner group was won by Nikoly Rudnev (Kharkov, Ukraine), 7 (out of 8) points, followed by Józef Dominik (Cracow, Poland, 6), Max Lange (Berlin, Germany), 5) − not related to Max Lange −, Asch (4½) (Austria), M. Gargulak (Husovice near Brno, Moravia), and Heinrich Wagner (both 4), A.N. Hallgarten (3), K. Pahl (2) (all from Germany), and Anton Olson (½) (Sweden).

During the tournament, a group of Russian and German masters, including Peter Petrovich Saburov and World Champion Emanuel Lasker, who did not enter the tournament itself, followed an initiative from the Saint Petersburg 1914 tournament and made concrete plans for an International Chess Federation (see also FIDE).

The next DSB congresses, it was decided, were scheduled for Bad Oeynhausen (1916) and Munich (1918). But history took a different turn. The political situation became more and more tense while the tournament went on. Milan Vidmar, in his autobiography Goldene Schachzeiten, gives a fine report about the melancholic mood of the masters participating in the unfinished Mannheim "chess symphony". Soldiers of the German army began to dominate the city panorama. When Germany put first an ultimatum (July 31) and then declared war the following day against Russia, the tournament had to be interrupted.

After the declaration of war, eleven "Russian" players (Alekhine, Bogoljubov, Bogatyrchuk, Flamberg, Koppelman, Maljutin, Rabinovich, Romanovsky, Saburov, Selezniev, Weinstein) were interned in Rastatt, Germany. On September 14, 17, and 29, 1914, four of them (Alekhine, Bogatyrchuk, Saburov, and Koppelman) were freed and allowed to return home via Switzerland.{{cite web

|url=http://www.chesscafe.com/text/mannheim.txt

|title=Mannheim 1914 The Legend

|url-status=dead

|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211035736/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/mannheim.txt

|archivedate=2008-12-11

}} A fifth player, Romanovsky was freed and went back to Petrograd in 1915,{{cite book

| author=Romanov, Isaak Zalmanovich

| title=Petr Romanovsky

| publisher=Fizkultura i sport

| year=1984

| pages=20 | language=Russian

}} and a sixth one, Flamberg was allowed to return to Warsaw in 1916.{{cite web

| url=http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter04.html

| title=The Internees | website = Chess Notes by Edward Winter | date = 16 January 2005

}} Whilst imprisoned, some participated in the Triberg chess tournament.

Ukrainian master Efim Bogoljubov stayed in Triberg im Schwarzwald, married a local woman and spent the rest of his life in Germany, where he settled permanently since 1926.

Frenchman Dawid Janowski, born in the Russian Empire, as well as Alekhine, was interned {{cite news |title=CHESS |work=Cheltenham Chronicle |date=5 September 1914 |accessdate=21 June 2015 |url=http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000518/19140905/068/0006| via = British Newspaper Archive|url-access=subscription }} but released to Switzerland after a short internment. Then he moved to the United States.

The American Frank James Marshall, being from a neutral country, was allowed to leave. It took him five days to travel to London, and he left almost at once for New York City. In his My Fifty Years of Chess Marshall wrote: "I made for the Dutch border and arrived in Amsterdam after many adventures. Usually a seven-hour trip, it took me 39 hours.

Somewhere on the border I lost my baggage, containing all my

belongings and the presents I received in St. Petersburg and

elsewhere...Five years later, much to my astonishment, my trunks

arrived in New York, with their contents intact!"

{{reflist}}

• Werner Lauterbach (1964), Mannheim 1914, Düsseldorf: Walter Rau Verlag (tournament book) {{in lang|de}}
• A. J. Gillam (2014), Mannheim 1914 and the Interned Russians, Nottingham: The Chess Player, {{ISBN|978-0992792428}}

• 8th Chess Olympiad - which took place during the outbreak of World War II.

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Category:Invitational chess tournaments

Category:Chess in Germany

Category:1914 in chess

Category:1914 in German sport

Category:Sports competitions in Mannheim

Category:July 1914 sports events in Europe

Category:20th century in Mannheim