Bogo was one of the greatest, and underrated, players of his day. He had plus scores against the likes of Reti, Rubinstein, Spielmann and Nimzovich. He also won some very strong tournaments. Unfortunately, it’s his match loses that everybody remembers.
The claim is that in 1929, Alekhine only agreed to play a world championship match against him to avoid a rematch against Capablanca. Alekhine won easily, +11 -5 =9. Five years later, in 1934, they met again and Alekhine won that one, too, by a score of +8 -3 =15.
After achieving initial success in Russia, Bogoljubow played in Mannheim 1914 to gain experience in international tournaments. When World War One broke out on August 1st, he and the other Russian players were arrested by the Germans. While in prison they were allowed to play a number of tournaments.
Life wasn’t too bad because during the war Bogoljubow married a German school teacher and after the war he continued living in Germany, but officially he was still a Soviet citizen.
Nikolai Krylenko, the official government chess promoter in the Soviet Union tried to convince Bogoljubow to return and in 1924, he visited Russia to take part in the Soviet Championship which he won. The next year, he won the Soviet Championship again as well as the very strong Moscow tournament of 1925 ahead of Lasker, Capablanca, and Rubinstein. Also, in 1925, he won the Open German Championships in Breslau ahead of Rubinstein and Nimzovich.
In 1926, he returned to Germany and applied for citizenship. This made him a non-person in the Soviet Union and mention of his name was forbidden and his name removed from tournament crosstables.
In 1927, Bogoljubow was now a German and in 1928 and 1929 he played two matches against Max Euwe that were for the "FIDE Championship.” As a result, Bogo was able to get enough sponsors in Germany and The Netherlands that he was able to challenge Alekhine a for a world title match.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bogoljubow was a German citizen but not of "German blood" and so he was no longer allowed to play in German Championships or for the national team but he was allowed to work as a coach.
Bogoljubow has been accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, but it is quite probable that he was a member of the Nazi Party as a matter of convenience.
During World War II, Hans Frank, who became known as the Butcher of Poland and was executed after the war for war crimes, invited Bogoljubow to move to Kracow to play chess and to work as a translator. Before the war was over Bogoljubow returned to Germany and after the war again began taking part in the German Championship. He died June 18, 1952 in Triberg, where he had lived most of his life.
It’s unfortunate that, at lease as far as I know, nobody has written a book of his best games. Of course, nowadays Bogoljubow is pretty much forgotten, but his games deserve to be better known. On chessgames.com you can find a collection of 56 of his best games. Below in one of them from Bad Pistyan 1922.
The tournament was the result of a letter Gyula Breyer, who had died in early November 1921, to the Secretary of the Kosice Chess Club, suggesting that a strong international tournament should be arranged in Pistyan that would carry on the tradition started when the town had hosted a strong international tournament in 1912. The event was designated the Gyula Breyer Memorial Tournament. There was also a “B’ event made up of lesser masters.
Oldrich Duras, Emanuel Lasker, Aron Nimzovich and Richard Teichmann did not reply. Rubinstein accepted, but had to withdraw before the tournament began because of illness.
The race for first was close and the final result was still in doubt until the last round. After the next to last round Alekhine and Bogoljubov were tied with 14 points. In the last round Alekhine could only draw with Reti and Bogoljubow defeated Euwe to win the tournament.
 |
| Reti vs Euwe |
1) Bogoljubow 15.0
2-3) Spielmann and Alekhine 14.5
4) Gruenfeld 11.0 5) Reti 10.5
6-7) Saemisch and Wolf 9.5
8) Tartakower 9.0
9-11) Tarrasch, Euwe and Johner 8.5
12-13) von Balla and Treybal 8.0
14-15) Selezniev and Hromadka 7.0
16-17) Prokes and Przepiorka 6.0
18) Marco 5.5
19) Opocensky 4.5
Bogo’s straightforward crush of Wolf is most impressive. Heinrich Wolf (October 20, 1875 – December 1943), was an Austrian journalist and master. In 1908, he and Simon Alapin served as Emanuel Lasker’s second for his World Championship match against Tarrasch. This was the first match in which seconds were used.
After Hitler's authorization in September 1941, between October 1941 and October 1942, the Germans deported approximately 183,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews to ghettos, shooting sites, concentration camps and killing centers, primarily in German-occupied Poland, the Baltic States and Belarus among other locations. In December 1941, Wolf was among those deported to the Riga ghetto where he was murdered by the Nazis.
No comments:
Post a Comment