Actually the term Gay Nineties didn’t became widely used until during the Great Depression of the 1930s. At the time, the people longed for a comfortable past and chose to remember only the good things of the 1890s.
Among the pleasant memories were the newfangled gas lights and vaudeville shows, 5 cent motion picture theaters called Nickelodeons and Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt leading the fearless Rough Riders against the Spaniards in Cuba three years before he became President. And, there was the memory of a marvelous thing called a Ferris wheel at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
The 1890s saw one of the biggest bicycle crazes in history that was brought about as a result of several significant developments in bicycles: the invention of the "safety bicycle" with its chain-drive transmission, whose gear ratios allowed smaller wheels without a loss of speed and the subsequent invention of inflatable air filled tires.
Experiments with chain-drives had been attempted before, but it wasn’t until the Rover produced in 1885 that the craze hit. In 1896, bicycles were one of the few areas of the economy where sales were growing and people were buying bicycles whether they could afford them or not.
This attracted hundreds of manufacturers into the bicycle business and the increase in production resulted in a market saturation and over-supply and many bicycle manufacturers went out of business.
Then along came the internal-combustion engine which when added to a bicycle resulted in the motorcycle, and soon after, an engine was added to 4-wheel carriages resulting in the motor car.
Forgotten was the economic crisis which greatly worsened when the Panic of 1893 set off a widespread economic depression in the United States that lasted until 1896.
Germany had managed much better than most countries and when 1897 rolled around things were looking up unless you were the Russian chess playing prince Sergei Urusov; he died in November of that year.
On January 14, Lasker defeated Steinitz (+10 -2 =5) in a match held Moscow for the world championship. Then Steinitz died on February 22 while in a private hospital where he had been placed on account of mental illness that was brought on by playing chess. At least that’s what was reported. Steinitz had indeed gone insane and was institutionalized, but he didn’t die until August 12, 1900. The same couldn’t be said for Berthold Englisch who died for real of a brain disease in Vienna on October 19, 1897.
Great Britain edged the United States 5.5-4.5 in the second Anglo-American match. Pillsbury won the 6th US championship in a match against Showalter in New York by a score of +10 -8 =3. In June 1897, the first women's international tournament was held in London and it was won by Mary Rudge who dominated the other players by scoring 18 wins, no losses and one draw.
Berlin celebrated seventy years of the Berliner Schachgesellschaft (Berlin Chess Society) by holding a major international tournament from September 13 to October 4, 1897.
There were several notable players absent: world champion Emanuel Lasker, former world champion Wilhelm Steinitz, Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch and Harry Nelson Pillsbury. Nevertheless, it still was a very strong event.
There were twenty players to start, but after playing a short draw in the first round Curt von Bardeleben had to withdraw. Berthold Englisch also withdrew after round eleven, thus forfeiting the rest of his games. He was accused of of accepting a bribe to withdraw, but as mentioned, he died on October 19th which pretty much disproved the accusation.
Although Blackburne lead for most of the event it eventually became a race between Rudolf Charousek and Carl Walbrodt.
Charousek had made his international debut at Nuremberg 1896 where he only finished 12th out of 19, but his games had been impressive. Shortly afterwards he had tied Chigorin for first at Budapest.
Walbrodt was brought in as a last minute replacement for Arnold Schottlander and ended up having the best tournament performance of his life. Unfortunately, both would die within just a few years of the completion of this tournament.
Final standings:
1) Charousek 13.5
2) Walbrodt 13.0
3) Blackburne 12.0
4-5) Janowski and Burn 11.0
6-8) Schlechter, Marco and Alapin 10.5
9) Caro 10.0
10) Chigorin 9.5
11) Schiffers 9.0
12) Metger 8.5
13-14) Cohn and Winawer 7.5
15) Suechting 7,0
16) Teichmann 6.5
17-18) Englisch and Zinkl 5.5
19) Albin 2.0
Chigorin’s opponent in the following game, Adolf Julius Zinkl (June 10, 1871 – June 3,1944, 72 years old) is virtually unknown, but he was a very aggressive player. Zinkl's tournament career was short due to his professional duties, but he was famous for his excellent memory, receiving the nickname Das lebende Konversationslexikon (the living encyclopedia). He also performed very well in blindfold exhibitions.
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| Zinkl |
Zinkl was born in Neuhaus, Bohemia in what is today today the Czech Republic and died in Vienna, Austria. He was an employee of the postal service and worked for the Neue Freie Presse.
In 1877, Zinkl's family moved to Znaim, Mähren (today Znojmo, Czech Republic) where he went to school. It was not until the success of Max Weiss at New York in 1889, that he became interested in chess. He soon became too strong for the other students in Znaim, so he turned his attention to correspondence play and won 5th prize in the correspondence tournament (1890-1891) of the Deutsche Wochenschach.
When Zinkl joined the postal service in 1892, he moved to Vienna where he played in the Cafe Scheuch and the New Vienna Chess Club. By the spring of 1893 he had developed into a very strong player; he finished 3rd in the Vierkampf in Vienna against Carl Schlechter, Georg Marco and Julius Thirring and won the Brilliancy prize for his win over Marco. His name could usually be found in the top half of many local events and he often scored wins over top masters. In 1904, he drew a match against Marco.
In this game the two players indulge in a lot of maneuvering without either side making any progress until move 28 when Zinkl makes a perfectly natural move only to get destroyed by a tactical shot that seems to come out of nowhere.
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