The Relationship between A.
Nimzowitsch and A. Aljechin/Alekhine
Two Russian World Players
in
Exile
Александр Алехин (Alexander Aljechin) was
born in 1892, so he was six years younger
than Nimzowitsch. Both were born in the Russian Empire, and they had at least the Russian
language
in common. It is not known if they met each other in their younger years, and the
first major tournament in
which they both participated was Hamburg 1910, where
Nimzowitsch
ended up at the 4th place and Ajechin at the 7th, so Aljechin,
aged only 18, was still pretty
inexperienced. In the years to come they played each other
in several tournaments, and in most
cases Aljechin was the one who was more successful, at least up to 1926,
when Nimzowitsch
won the tournament of Dresden, ahead of Aljechin, Rubinstein, Tartakower etc., and in the
following years Aljechin seems to have avoided tournaments to which Nimzowitsch had been
or could be be
invitated.
Aljechin
emigrated to France after
the war and became a French citizen, and so he represented
France in team matches. Nimzowitsch, on the other hand, never became a Danish citizen so he
was
unable to represent any country.
After Aljechin
had become world champion in 1927 by beating Capablanca he could take
certain liberties when formulating his conditions for taking part in
various events. However,
after the victory at Karlsbad 1929 Nimzowitsch's career was declining
due to his heart problems
and general exhaustion, and he no longer constituted a threat to
Aljechin. For instance in Bled 1931
he lost several games by making a blunder in a good
position.
Rudolf
Spielmann: “J’accuse!”
The selfish behaviour on the part of the reigning world champion caused Rudolf
Spielmann to
write an "Open letter" to Aljechin in the “Wiener
Schachzeitung” in 1932. Under the headline
“J’accuse”, (with a reference to Émile Zola’s article about the Dreyfus
case) the letter starts
with the words "Sehr geehrter Herr Weltmeister Dr. Aljechin!" (Highly
honoured Mr. World
Champion Dr. Aljechin!) and Spielmann reproaches Aljechin for having acted in a
unsportsmanlike
way towards Capablanca and Nimzowitsch by persuading organizers of great events
to stop
those two Grandmasters from challenging him.
Karlsbad 1929
In Karlsbad 1929 Aljechin was the only world player not to take part in the
tournament, and he
explained away his absence with the fact that he had to prepare himself for the
upcoming World
Championship match against Bogoljubov (who on the other hand took part in
Karlsbad).
The
What and the How schools
But Aljechin has produced an interesting documentation about Karlsbad 1929. He
sent several
reports to the New York Times, which can now be studied on
Edward Winter's web site "Chess Notes".
The article series is called "Alekhine on Carlsbad
1929". In
the first article Aljechin gives an interesting
review of the players and he
says he can identify two clear alternative styles of play, or schools,
which he
calls the "What" and the "How" schools. The "What"
players are Capablanca, Maróczy,
Vidmar, Euwe, and Grünfeld . These players
are said to be more interested in winning than in how
they reach the result.
(Nimzowitsch used the call Capablanca "The Master of Type Positions).
See picture at http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/carlsbad.html
The
"How" players were Bogoljubow, Nimzowitsch, Tartakower, Canal, Sämisch,
and Colle. These
players are supposed to be more artistic, and they may be
regarded as representatives of the Neoromantic
or Hypermodern school. Moreover,
Aljechin makes a similar comment after his victory over Capablanca
in the World
Championship match; and he said that he had long wanted to prove that it was
possible to
win against Capablanca despite the fact that he played like a
machine, or perhaps rather thanks to this fact.
New
York 1927: Chess should be artistic
And two years before Karlsbad 1929, when commenting on the tournament in
New York 1927, Aljechin
was on a similar track and identified two categories of
players, one of which consisted of Capablanca,
Maroczy, Vidmar, and Euwe,
"who do not regard chess as art and whose only aim is to win."
Aljechin
even calls them
To the other side
belonged Breyer, Reti, Bogoljubow, Nimzowitsch, Sämisch, and Colle. "What
a lot
of imagination, temperament and will-power they develop".
Artistry
but no Hypermodernism
Obviously Aljechin preferred the "How" or "Artistic"
school, although he himself had declared that he
did not want to be regarded as
a member of "the hypermoderns". But undeniably it is proof of a rather
exclusive and romantic taste to prefer artistry to results.
well as tactics, and he probably
regarded himself as standing above any kind of schools.
Aljechin
is very appreciative in his comments towards Nimzowitsch's performance at
Karlsbad 1929,
and in the article after the 21st and last round he says
".... an exciting finish, Aaron Nimzowitsch being
the man of the day.
....." There is also a photo from Karlsbad 1929 of the two Grandmasters
together
with the patron of the tournament, Victor Tietz, and they seem to be
very friendly.
To mark
Nimzowitsch's death in 1935 Aljechin wrote an obituary notice in the Danish
chess magazine
"Skakbladet" in which he recognizes Nimzowitsch's
life-work. Aljechin, at the time playing a tournament
at Örebro, Sweden, wrote
that the only reason for Nimzowitsch's failure to reach the absolute top was
his
"artistic hypersensitivity".
The article ends "Let us honour the memory of this
great artist and often passionate but always truthful
and noble chess
thinker." The letter was signed Örebro April 15, one month after
Nimzowitsch's day
of death, March 16. Seemingly a pretty long time of reflexion.
Shortly before the event a local newspaper, "Örebro-Kuriren",
published an interview in which Aljechin
comments on Jewish chess players. He is
of opinion that Jews have a natural talent for chess, which however
was also
said to be true about Slavs. Such statements seem surprising and unscientific
today, but we
have to remember that that there was a widespread debate about
national characters at the time, not only
among Nazis.
Sthig Jonasson
has written a book about the tournament Örebro 1935 ("Örebro 1935 -
Aljechin i Sverige",
Uppsala 1993") and he tells a surprising anecdote
about Aljechin's bad sense of direction. The tournament
hall was a ten minutes'
walk away from Aljechin's hotel, and you could have expected a master of
blindfold
chess to be able to memorize such a short walk, but in fact Aljechin
required a guide each time he was to
move that distance, both directions.
A Change in Attitudes – Nazi Influencies
However, Aljechin's appreciating attitude towards
Nimzowitsch was to be different. When the war broke out
in 1939, Aljechin, under
unclear circumstances, got himself involved with the Nazi Party. Aljechin was
known
to have had a drinking problem (which is believed to have caused his loss
to Euwe in 1935) and this fact in
combination with the difficulty of surviving
on his chess playing in war time might have contributed to his
becoming a
collaborator. He probably came under pressure from the Nazis, or formally the
Vichy regime,
who compelled him to lend
out his prestige in compensation for personal services, such as granting him a
visa.
After the war he was persona non grata and his book "
Das Schachleben in Sowjet-Rußland" 1 was
included in
an index of forbidden books, issued by the "Allied Censorship
in Post War Germany
".
The author's name is
stated as Aljechin,
Alexander von. So in 1921 his surname was Aljechin and it had the noble marker
“von”
attached to it.
The
fact is, anyway, that he published several propaganda articles, and in 1942 he
wrote two articles in the
"Deutsche Zeitung" about "Jewish and
Arian chess", where he heavily critizises Nimzowitsch, "the other
Eastern
Jew", (after having mentioned the Polish player Rubinstein, also a
former challenger for the World Championship
title). One remarkable point is
that he calls the concept of overprotection "a Jewish idea, barely aiming
at defence,
without self-confidence, being afraid of attacking". Aljechin
recognizes a few good points in Nimzowitsch’s
“system”, such as the
principle of the centre, but he says those points hade already been brought
forward by
others, and most of AN’s teaching is scrapped as “false” or
“Jewish”.
Inconsistent
Spelling of AN's Names
For some reason Aljechin goes back to the old spelling of AN's surname:
"Der Rigaer Jude Aaron Niemzowitsch...".
Did Aljechin want to state
that the spelling with "ie" (and the stress on "-zo"?) was
more "Jewish"? If anything,
it would rather be "more
Russian", since that spelling reflects the name version used in Latvia
,
as part of the
Russian Empire.
The
same question may be asked about the first name. Aljechin is not consequent,
because in the second article
he writes "... eine neue Gefahr in Gestalt
eines anderen Ostjuden, Aron Niemzowitsch..." If Aljechin thought that
either of Aron/Aaron was more Jewish, he was not correctly informed, because
there is and probably was no
ideological difference between the two forms as far
as we can tell nowadays.
A
more plausible explanation of his inconsistency is that he was just careless. In
his final report from Karlsbad
1929 he uses the form Aaron (while captions in
the same copy of the New York Times use the spelling Aron),
and in the articles
in the "Deutsche Zeitung" 1942 it is both Aron and Aaron. There he
also tells a strange story
about Nimzowitsch's behaviour in 1927. He is said to
have distributed visiting cards with the text "Arnold
Niemzowitsch -
Candidate for the World Championship" (This was before the match
Capablanca-Aljechin).
It is hard to believe that Aljechin should have invented
the story about the name "Arnold" (by the way also
told elsewhere by
Hans Kmoch, the author of "Rubinstein gewinnt!") so we have to assume
that it was some
kind of eccentric joke on the part of Nimzowitsch, also taking
into consideration the competitive situation between
Aljechin and Nimzowitsch
(and Bogoljubov) for a match against the reigning champion Capablanca. One
hypothesis
could be that AN already in 1927 felt the rising wave of
antisemitism, and that he tried to hide his Jewish identity
behind a name that
did not have a Jewish ring to it, but such a theory does not seem plausible,
although Aljechin
tries to make us believe this could have been the reason.
Nimzowitsch was already too well-known to be able to
hide himself, and there are
no reports according to which he should have used the pseudonym Arnold after
1927,
although antisemitic feelings gradually increased with the rise of the
Nazi Party. Not that there was no reason to
be afraid; a few years later both
Lasker and Tarrasch were harassed by the Nazis.
As
to to spelling "Niem-" used by Aljechin, it could be due to
carelessness, but also to the fact that the version
with only "Nim-"
was not yet generally established. An example of this is that Gideon Stahlberg
writes "Niemzowitsch"
in articles in "Tidskrift för Schack"
as late as 1931, and the pronunciation with the stress on the syllable -zo was
common long after.
Denial
After the war Aljechin first denied having written the articles, and then
admitted that he had written them, but
said that the defaming passages had been
inserted by a Nazi editor. Hed died in 1946, in his 54th year, possibly
murdered
in revenge for alleged Nazi sympathies. Despite all this, he was eventually
forgiven by the Russians,
and in 1956 the Soviet Chess Federation arranged a
great tournament in
Botwinnik said at the time about him that probably no
master had possessed a combinational talent such as
that of A. Aljechin.
Aljechin
was not the only victim of the war, and a reasonable judgement would be that his
anti-semitism was
not based on a true conviction but was the result of a tragic
conflict of interests. He was no hero, but probably
no Nazi either.
Provocative
Addressing
Nimzowitsch, on his side, is not known to have made any religious or
racial statements in public, but he could
be a bit provocative towards his
fellow competitors, so it would not be too astonishing if someone should
"hit back". He is said sometimes to have teased Aljechin by
addressing him by the name of "Aljoshin", with
a pronunciation that
sounded like a variation of Aljechin's original name in Russian, because he knew
that Aljechin
for some reason did not want to be reminded of that variation of
his old name.
Nowadays
it seems surprising that the second vowel in the name Алехин
should be pronounced as /o/, but it might
very well be the case that the name
was pronounced in that way by persons speaking a certain dialect (or sociolect),
although the "e" in the spelling did not have the phonetic value /o/.
Some writers nowadays spell the name "Алëхин",
which is a way (although questionable in
principle) of representing the variation mentioned above, since the sound
value
of ë is /io/. Recent statements seem to indicate that Aljechin's relations
insisted and still insist on the e in the
second syllable, and that they did not
like the o.
Bernard
Cafferty writes: "The letter ë was not introduced until 1942, but we may
assume that new letter just indicated
a sound that was already in use. However,
in a way it would be unhistoric to use the spelling Алëхин
for games
played before 1942."
The
existence of two forms of pronunciation might support the credibility of the
anecdote of Nimzowitsch calling
his fellow-countryman "Aljoshin". So
Nimzowitsch could be a real tease, but in his books he is highly respectful
to
Aljechin.
The French transcription of the Russian name Алехин became Alekhine, also adapted in English but
pronounced
differently (the stress on the first syllable) although it must be
said to be a not very accurate representation of the
original name. Did he
decide that spelling himself, or was it the immigration officer, like in the
case of Nimzowitsch
and the Latvian/Russian emigration officer? If it was his
own decision, maybe it was because he wanted to get rid
of his Russian
connection.
a nasal vowel in the last syllable. In English just
"Alekin" would be better, but better still "Aliekin", or
Alyekin/Alyechin,
where
the inserted "i/y" would indicate the l mouillé, and the k/ch stands for
the Scottish velar fricative sound in "Loch",
with the stress on the second syllable.
There
is an
autographed photo in "The Oxford Companion to Chess" that is signed
"D. Aljechin", so we must assume
this was his preferred way of
transcribing the surname, unless the photo dates from the period when he wanted
to appear
loyal to the German regime of the time.
perhaps he had not passed all the exams required.)
Two strong Personalities
No doubt both Nimzowitsch and Aljechin had very strong egos, made public by
their prestigious struggle for world chess
leadership, which resulted at times in a tense relationship. There are certain
features in the lives of them both that in retrospect
may be seen as small-minded and immature, but we have to remember that as
professionals they had to work hard in order to
survive.
Aljechin's
fate after 1939 is a tragic one, and it still remains to be found out why he
wrote his Nazi propaganda articles about
Nimzowitsch, Rubinstein, and other Jewish players; whether they reflected a true
conviction or if he was caught in "a hopeless
endgame".
(Thanks to Bernard Cafferty, Schachverlag Rattman, Edward Winter (Chess Notes), Dan Thomasson, Anita Sikora)
1) Aljechin, Alexander von: Das Schachleben in Sowjet-Rußland.
Berlin: Kagan 1921.
081213