She was born on February 8, 1906 in Detroit, Michigan. Her father was Julius Kahn (March 8, 1874 – November 4, 1942), an engineer, industrialist, and manufacturer and a multi-millionaire. He was the inventor of the Kahn System, a reinforced concrete engineering technique for building construction which he patented in 1903 and it was soon used world wide. For anyone who is dying to know more about the Kahn System, Wikipedia has a pretty good article on it HERE. He was also president of a steel company.
As a young girl Gisela had passion for Greek and in a 1945 interview stated, “When the other children were out playing, I used to study Greek. I loved it just the way I love chess now.” She went on to study the classics as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College where she won a prestigious Charles Elliott Norton fellowship which she used to continue her studies at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece.
In 1927, she returned to New York and married William Gresser, a New York City lawyer and musicologist. He died in 1992. After her marriage she became a housewife who raised their two sons, Ion and Julian, both of whom became quite successful.
Gresser learned chess at a late age while she and her husband were on a cruise returning from France to New York in the late 1930s. She borrowed a chess manual from a fellow passenger and taught herself how to play. By the end of the cruise, she was hooked. But not completely hooked. Gresser considered men obsessed with chess bizarre. She said, “You know women are too reasonable to spend all their time on chess.” Her wealth and luxurious lifestyle allowed her to pursue many hobbies such as horseback riding, sculpting, painting, and reading in ten different languages. Gresser was also an accomplished musician and she was still going on safaris even in her eighties.
In 1938, she was a spectator at the first US Women's Championship that was organized by Caroline Marshall and held at the Rockefeller Center in New York City. The tournament was won by Adele Rivero. By 1944, Mrs. Gresser, was good enough to win the US Women’s Championship. She also won in 1948 (with Karff), 1955 (with Nancy Roos), 1957 (with Sonja Graf), 1962, 1965, 1966 (with Lisa Lane), 1967 and 1969 at the age of 63.
Gresser represented the United States in several international events and played in five Women's Candidates tournaments and three Women's Chess Olympiads. She was also Women's World Championship challenger in 1949 and 1950.
She retired from professional chess at the age of 82 and lived in comfort on Park Avenue in Manhattan where she had an entire floor to herself in an apartment filled with antiques. She died at home at the age of 94 on December 4, 2000.
Mrs. Gresser sported the WIM title and in April 1963, with a rating of 2211, she became the first woman in the United States to achieve the title of National Master. In 1992 she became the first woman inducted into the United States Chess Hall of Fame. At the time of her death her USCF rating was 2090.
Mrs. Gressers’ opponent in the following game was Jozsa Langos (August 28, 1911 – May 17, 1987) a WIM from Hungary. It was the 8th Women's World Championship and it took place in the winter of 1949–1950 in Moscow. The title had been vacant since the death of Vera Menchik in 1944. The tournament was dominated by the Russian who took the first four places.
1) Lyudmila Rudenko 11.5
2) Olga Rubtsova 10.5
3-4) Elisaveta Bykova and Valentina Belova 10.0
5-6) Edith Keller and Eileen Tranmer 9.5
7) Chantal Chaude de Silans 9.5
8) Fenny Heemskerk 8.0
9) Clarice Benini 7.0
10-11) Jozsa Langos and María Teresa Mora 6.0
12-14) Gisela Gresser, Nina Grushkova-Belska and Mona May Karff 5.0
15) Ingrid Larsen 4.5
16) Roza Germanova 3.0
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