Emanuel Lasker: Second World Chess Champion

By Isaak Linder

The ChessCafe World Chess Champions Series Emanuel Lasker was a great chess fighter, thinker and researcher. He was possessed of gigantic playing strength, retaining the title of World s Number One Chessplayer for 27(!) years. Even after losing his crown, he kept his ability for a long time, as shown by his victories and prize-winning finishes in immensely powerful international tournaments when he was 54 (Moravska-Ostrava 1923), 55 (New York 1924), 56 (Moscow 1925), and even at 66 (Moscow 1935)! One of the chief postulates of the Second World Champion was the battle of honor. On the chessboard, lies and dishonesty have no place. These words of Lasker could serve, even today, as an example to every young chessplayer of how to relate to the Great Game. Emanuel Lasker was the first in history to achieve a universal style. This was a Style of the Future, which is why the Second World Champion would not be understood by many of his contemporaries, who believed that he had no style at all. Lasker s games of chess, like his entire chess legacy, will live forever! Join Russian chess historians Isaak and Vladimir Linder as they take you on a journey exploring the life and games of the great world champion Emanuel Lasker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell Enterprises, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781888690989

Book preview

Emanuel Lasker

Second World Chess Champion

by

Isaak and Vladimir Linder

Foreword by Andy Soltis

Game Annotations by Karsten Müller

The World Chess Champion Series

2010

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

Milford, CT USA

Emanuel Lasker

Second World Chess Champion

by Isaak and Vladimir Linder

© Copyright 2010

Isaak Linder and Vladimir Linder

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any manner or form whatsoever or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-888690-60-6

Published by:

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

PO Box 5460

Milford, CT 06460 USA

http://www.russell-enterprises.com

[e-mail]

Translated from Russian by Jim Marfia

Editing and Proofreading by David Kaufmann, Hanon Russell

Cover design by Janel Lowrance

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Signs and Symbols

Foreword by Andy Soltis

Publisher’s Note

A Word About the Authors by Yuri Averbakh

Prologue

Chapter 1: Life

Childhood and Adolescence

Family

Personality

Mathematician

Teacher

Dissertation

Philosopher

Einstein and Lasker

Politics

Curiosities

Humor

England

Holland

Russia

USA

Chapter 2: Matches, Tournaments and Opponents

Alekhine

Berlin Tournaments, 1890, 1918

Bird

Bird-Lasker Matches, 1890, 1892

Blackburne

Blackburne – Lasker Match, 1892

Cambridge Springs Tournament, 1904

Capablanca

Charousek

Chigorin

Chigorin – Lasker Match, 1903

Consultation Games

Duras

Hastings Tournament, 1895

Janowsky

London Tournaments, 1892 (2) and 1899

Maróczy

Marshall

Matches

Matches for the World championship

Lasker – Steinitz, 1894

Lasker – Steinitz, 1896/97

Lasker – Marshall, 1907

Lasker-Tarrasch, 1908

Lasker-Schlechter, 1910

Lasker – Janowsky, 1910

Lasker – Capablanca, 1921

Mieses

Mieses – Lasker Match, 1889/90

Moravska-Ostrava Tournament, 1923

Moscow Tournaments – 1925, 1935 and 1936

New York Tournaments – 1893, 1924

Nottingham Tournament, 1936

Nuremberg Tournament, 1896

Paris, 1900

Pillsbury

Ratings and Statistics

Rubinstein

St. Petersburg – 1895/96, 1909, 1914

Schlechter

Showalter – Lasker Match 1893

Simultaneous Exhibitions

Steinitz

Tarrasch

Teichmann

Torre

Tournaments

Zürich, 1934

Chapter 3: Chess Works – His Games and Discoveries

Aesthetics

Aphorisms

Attack

Combinations

Defense

Endgame

Endgame Studies

Famous Games

Losses

Middlegame

Neo-Romanticism

Opening Discoveries

Playing Style

Psychology

Reforming Chess

Chapter 4: Writer and Journalist

Journalistic Efforts

Common Sense in Chess

How Viktor Became a Chess Master

Lasker’s Chess Magazine

The Alekhine-Bogoljubow Return Match for the World championship, 1934

My Match with Capablanca

Popular Table Games

The Beginnings of Chess Knowledge

Works

Lasker’s Manual of Chess

Chapter 5: Impervious to Time

Epilogue

Literature

The World Champions Talk about Lasker

Lasker Memorials

Significant Dates in the Life and Work of Emanuel Lasker

Additional Crosstables

Lasker’s Tournament Record

Lasker’s Match Record

Bibliography

Player Index

Game Index

Opening Index

List of Other eBooks

Signs and Symbols

1-0      White wins

0-1      Black wins

½-½    Draw agreed

+         check

#          mate

!           a strong move

!!          a brilliant/unobvious move

?          a weak move, an error

??        a grave error

!?         a move worth consideration

=         an equal position

+=         White stands slightly better

±         White has a clear advantage

+–       White has a winning position

=+         Black stands slightly better

∓         Black has a clear advantage

–+         Black has a winning position

(D)        see the next diagram

Foreword

When he began his My Great Predecessors series in 2003, Garry Kasparov adopted a literary device: After telling the story of a world champion, Kasparov quoted what the champions successors had to say about him. Kasparov said he did this because it has become customary.

Perhaps so. But it became customary only after it was used in Kings of the Chess World (2001) by Dr. Isaak Linder and Vladimir Linder. This book is arguably the finest work of chess history in more than 30 years. One of the Kings chapters has been improved and transformed into the book you are reading.

You may not be familiar with the authors because the Linders, father and son, have been published mainly in Russian and German, and only a fraction of their vast contribution to chess literature has been translated into English. Other chess historians know them for their meticulous approach to the craft. They know Isaak Linder in particular for his personal ties to some of the great figures he’s written about. For example, during the memorial service for Vasily Smyslov at the Central Chess Club in Moscow in early 2010 he recalled playing Smyslov in Soviet junior events back in the 1930s. A photo survives of Dr. Linder playing Emanuel Lasker in a 1935 simul in Moscow. And he is probably the only historian to appear in a chess movie. In 1986 he was a consultant on the Cuban-Soviet movie Capablanca. When the film’s director needed someone to play the role of one of Capa’s frequent opponents, Rudolf Spielmann, he chose Dr. Linder for the part. I remember seeing a still photo of him from the film when my wife Marcy and I were warmly welcomed as guests at the Linders home in Moscow several years ago.

It should not be surprising that the life of Emanuel Lasker gets such a fine treatment from two native Russian-speakers. Many details of the second world champion’s life appear here for the first time, particularly relating to his play in six great international tournaments and a world championship match in Russia, and his two years residence in Moscow (1935-37). But Russia was only one of the many way-stations that Lasker called home on his career path. He lived for long stretches in Germany, England, and America. He even represented the United States at St. Petersburg 1909 and played under the Soviet sickle-and-hammer flag at Nottingham 1936. Lasker was welcomed all over the chess world, despite the Fischer-like fees he demanded, in an era when many other masters played for chump change. Thanks to his travels and wide-ranging interests, Lasker became an excellent linguist. He wrote some of his finest works in English and, as the Linders point out, knew enough Russian to give a short talk in 1936 about the studies of A.A. Troitsky.

Sorting out the facts of Lasker’s life is a lot more complicated than it may seem. For example, there’s no doubt that he played two full-scale matches with David Janowsky. But what were the conditions of those matches? Several sources claim that both were world championship contests. No, the Linders point out, only the 1910 match was for the title. And of course there is the mysterious 1910 match with Carl Schlecter. The Lasker-Schlechter contract has never been found and, in light of the way the two players conducted themselves in the final, dramatic game, there has been an unending debate about exactly what was in the minds of the two players. The Linders’ account provides rich detail and draws conclusions: They cite evidence that there was no two-point clause, the much-rumored-about contract provision that would have required Schlechter to win the final game in order to secure the title. The Linders also endorse Louis Blair’s secret clause theory that in the event of losing the match, Lasker was entitled to a quick rematch.

This book overthrows a widely held view concerning Lasker and the opening: He is often recalled as an anti-theoretician who cared nothing about the first 10 moves of a game and just followed the simplistic guidelines that he outlined in Common Sense in Chess. According to this myth, Lasker was about a 2800 player in the middlegame and endgame but only about an 1800 player in the opening. This is nonsense. No one so backward in one aspect of chess could have competed so well against super-booked-up opponents like Alexander Alekhine, let alone remain one of the world’s top five players for more than 30 years.

In truth, Lasker was an openings pioneer, as the Linders show. We take for granted basic moves such as 6. Bd2! in the MacCutcheon Variation of the French Defense, yet it was Lasker who showed its strength. The same goes for the Center Counter Defense with 6. h3!, the From’s Gambit with 4...g5 and numerous other lines that have never been given the name they deserve, the Lasker Variation.

Lasker’s creativity in chess went beyond the games he played. His literary accomplishments, including a considerable output as a newspaper columnist and magazine writer and editor, rival that of any world champion. I suspect many readers have never heard of his book on the 1934 Alekhine-Bogoljubow world championship match, for example. (I didn’t until I got my copy of Kings of the Chess World.) In addition, this book provides evidence that Lasker’s creativity in compositions exceeds that of any of his great successors. The White to play and win study, with just a king, rook and one pawn apiece that he composed in 1890 at age 21, is perhaps the finest composition ever from a world champion. If that were his only contribution to chess and he had not given us the Lasker-Bauer brilliancy or had not beaten Capablanca in the Exchange Lopez at St. Petersburg or had not written Common Sense in Chess, etc. he would still be remembered today. This book will also be revelatory to most readers when it comes to Lasker’s non-chess interests, such as his books, like Popular Board Games (1931), his invention of the strategy game Laska and his devotion to contract bridge at a time when that game was just beginning.

Finally, it should be noted that Lasker’s chess games have been analyzed so extensively before that there doesn’t seem to be anything new to say about them. But this book improved on the original Kings of the Chess World chapter by adding annotations from Karsten Müller. They are remarkably enlightening. Müller found stunning defensive as well as attacking resources. See, in particular Games 6, 23, 26, 32, 33, 43, 48 and 65. They do justice to the second world champion.

Andy Soltis

New York

June 2010

Publisher’s Note

This book originally appeared in Russian, part of the massive historical tome published in 2001, Korolyi Shakhmatnovo Mira (Kings of the Chess World). By the time we had the pleasure of meeting with Isaak Linder and his son Vladimir in Moscow in March 2008, the original single-volume work of almost one thousand triple-column, small-font, large-format pages had been split into individual books, one for each world champion. We quickly reached an agreement with the Linders to bring out these books in what would become in English The World Chess Champion Series.

The first in the series was about José Raúl Capablanca, the great Cuban world champion. This book on Lasker is the second in the series.

With the permission and encouragement of the authors, we made some changes to the original Russian edition. The original contained a fine selection of Lasker’s games. We brought in German grandmaster Karsten Müller to provide refreshing new notes to these classic games. American grandmaster Andy Soltis, who has himself written about Lasker, contributed a new Foreword. And crosstables of minor matches played by Lasker, not included in the original edition, were also added. Finally, we created indexes of the players, games and openings, and included more complete information in the headers of each game and game fragment.

There is a tendency for modern-day chessplayers either to ignore or fail to appreciate the great masters of the past. We hope this series helps to change that.

A Word about the Authors

The creative union of the Linders, father and son, came about in the late 1980s, when together they created a trilogy about three world champions, Capablanca, Lasker, and Alekhine (in that order) as part of the Geniuses of Chess series by the Sportverlag publishing house of Berlin (1988-1992). Since that time, their trophy wall has grown to include a number of other co-authored projects. There is the unusual documentary/artistic book, The Two Lives of Grandmaster Alatortsev (1994), and also the creation of a popular chess encyclopedia, printed both in Germany (1996) and in Russia (2003), as well as the fundamental work Korolyi Shakhmatnovo Mira [Kings of the Chess World], published by Bolshaya Rossyiskaya Entsiklopedia and Terra-Sport (2001).

I can boldly state that the formation of this union took place right before my eyes, for I have known the senior Linder, Isaak Maksovich, for nearly 70 years! We began playing together in the Young Pioneers’ Stadium in the mid-30s. I met Volodya when we prepared the Chess encyclopedia for the BCE, which would be 20 years ago.

At the authors’ request, I have edited a few of their recent voluminous works, and I must admit to being bowled over by the breadth of their conceptions! Very few people would be capable of taking such large swaths of chess history and recasting them into such an unusual literary form. How have they been able to put their ideas into concrete form?! Above all, because they have a system for dividing up the work. The elder takes charge of the historical approach, and the analytical duties; the son handles the literary decorations and the statistical basis of their works. As a reader, I can say that the results are a delectation for chess gourmets.

Shortcomings? Well, you know the old saying: The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything. This new series of books by Isaak and Vladimir, The World Chess Champion Series, is a reworked, corrected and filled-out edition of Kings of the Chess World, broken up into 14 separate volumes, from Steinitz to Kramnik. It is a panoramic, epic-length mural of the chess struggle on the topmost level from the end of the 19th through the beginning of the 21st centuries.

Yuri Averbakh

Moscow

April 2010

Prologue

In 2000, we completed work on the encyclopedic Kings of the Chess World, published jointly by the Great Russian Encyclopedia and the Terra Sport Publishing House. The format we chose, that of a story-like description of the world champions, drawn against a background of their epochs in encyclopedic style, met with the approval of our chess public. At the same time, a request was also made that in the future, for ease of use, this fundamental one-volume publication might be separated into a number of individual books, and that, if possible, each champion might receive his own volume.

Since then, how many new facts, details and nuances in the life and creativity of these kings, past and present, have been uncovered in the 21st century. One need only mention the publication of the work by the Polish historians Domansky and Lissovsky on Zukertort (Warsaw, 2002), leading to a re-examination of the adventurous life of one of the great chessplayers of the 19th century. Or the materials from the conference in Potsdam 2001, dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the death of the second world champion, Emanuel Lasker, shedding new light on many aspects of his work. Or the appearance of the Chigorin Collection (SP Books, 2000), dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the founder of the Russian Chess School. And there is the incomparable work of the 13th world champion, Garry Kasparov, My Great Predecessors (Moscow, 2003), already translated into many languages, and now itself the object of continual scrutiny in the pages of the worldwide chess press.

All this time, we too were collecting new material about the main heroes of our work and their opponents, hoping in time to fill out our work in this new format, while simultaneously correcting some unfortunate errors in the chess material.

Naturally, this new work forced us to take a somewhat different approach to laying out the material about the champions and their opponents. We used new and additional sources when describing strong tournaments or important players. And of course, we had the opportunity to enrich each volume with new games, illustrations, and recently published new material we had found.

The first book in the English-language version of this series, José Raúl Capablanca, Third World Chess Champion, appeared a few months ago. We are now pleased to bring chess fans the second in the series, Emanuel Lasker, Second World Chess Champion. It is our hope that this new World Chess Champion Series will gain the attention of both fans and experts of the art of chess.

Emanuel Lasker was a great chess fighter, thinker and researcher. He possessed great playing strength, retaining the title of world champion for 27 years. Even after relinquishing his title, he played at the highest level, winning strong international tournaments at Moravska-Ostrava 1923 (when he was 54) and New York 1924, taking second place at Moscow 1925, and finishing among the prize-winners at Moscow 1935 (when he was 66).

Lasker learned to play chess when he was 12 years old; by 26, he already understood its common sense – something that many never learn in their whole lifetime. In his case, it was probably because for Lasker, the philosopher and doctor of mathematics, chess and life were inseparable. In the chess struggle, he saw a model for the life of man. For him, the chess pieces had soul and character; he had a refined feeling for what each might achieve in a given concrete situation.

Lasker viewed chess not only as a battle of honor, but as a struggle for truth. On the chessboard, lies and dishonesty have no place. Lasker’s words still resonate, and can serve as a battle-cry for every young chessplayer even today. For millions of beginners, his famous Manual of Chess has been a guide not only to chess, but life. Lasker, a seeker of knowledge, always sought to share what he had learned.

Lasker was a citizen of the world. Born in Germany, he lived for long periods in England, the United States, and Russia. And everywhere he went, he showed what was reasonable, good and unchanging, giving lectures on chess, publishing books, chess journals and newspaper articles, giving numerous simultaneous exhibitions, and simply socializing with chess masters and amateurs alike.

Every world champion who followed him, wittingly or unwittingly, cultivated in himself a part of the great Lasker, then developed it. José Raúl Capablanca – defensive skill and endgame mastery; Alexander Alekhine – deep treatment of the questions of chess struggle; Max Euwe – tactical alertness; Mikhail Botvinnik – skillful preparation for upcoming events; Vassily Smyslov – enormous energy for the battle; Mikhail Tal – knowing how to win hopeless games; Tigran Petrosian – logic and mathematics; Anatoly Karpov – practical universality; Garry Kasparov – skill at exploiting the opponent’s psychological weaknesses.

Summing up these elements, we come to our major conclusion: Emanuel Lasker was the first in history to achieve a universal style. This was a style of the future, which is why the second world champion would not be understood by many of his contemporaries, who believed that he had no style at all.

Lasker’s legacy, his games, his writings, his personality, will live as long as chess is played – and beyond!

Isaak Linder,

Vladimir Linder

Moscow April 2010

Emanuel Lasker

1868-1941

Second World Chess Champion

Chapter 1

Life

Emanuel Lasker

Student of the Philosophical Faculty

at Berlin University

Childhood and Adolescence

Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24, 1868, in the small German village of Berlinchen (today, Barlinek, Poland), located about five or six hours’ travel from Berlin, the capital of Prussia.

In 1994, Polish historians discovered a Jewish registry in the archives of the Governor-General of Gorczow (Landsberg). This registry recorded the births in Barlinek between 1847 and 1874. Entry number 158 reads: ...To the wife, Rosalie, née Israelson, of a worker at this town’s synagogue, Michaelis Aaron Lasker, 24 December, 1868, at 3:00 in the afternoon, a birth occurred, bringing into the world a male child, to whom they gave the name, ‘Immanuel.’ Registered in Berlinchen, 29 December, 1868. Later, his parents would change the spelling to Emanuel, and his father would adopt the name Adolf.

Emanuel was the second of four children; he had an older brother Berthold, and two younger sisters Theofilie and Amalie. From childhood, he displayed unusual mathematical abilities, such as multiplying double-digit numbers in his head. As was customary, he studied the Talmud, which both his grandfather, the rabbi of the small town of Lessen, and father, cantor of Berlinchen, knew well. His father was proud of being a cantor, boasting to his wife Rosalie and his four children that his was a most honorable profession – for had not the great musician Johann Sebastian Bach also been cantor of the Protestant church in Leipzig? Unfortunately, prestigious though this work might have been, it brought precious little financial reward; in fact, there was barely enough to make ends meet. But Adolf Lasker’s optimism, gentle humor, and kind heart were a blessing to his family, and he tried to ensure that his children had a wide-ranging education.

Lasker’s older brother Berthold went to Berlin, first for high school, and then university medical school. Faced with dire poverty, he earned a living by occasional tutoring, but more often by winning a few pfennigs at cards or at chess in the Tea Salon in the central city. Sometimes he might end the evening an entire mark to the good. When word of his earnings reached home, his father decided that the time had come to send his younger son Emanuel to Berlin as well. Thus, at 11 years of age, Lasker bade farewell to quiet Berlinchen, with its wondrous lakes and woods, its cheery marketplaces and farewell to his first school, where he had been considered one of the brightest students. It was, in fact, a farewell to childhood.

Lasker passed all his exams brilliantly; accepted into one of Berlin’s high schools, he was placed in a class two years ahead of his actual age. However, he did not study there long. Within a few months, he fell ill with the measles, and was brought to the hospital. Berthold, not knowing any other way to help his brother pass the time in the ward, began teaching him to play chess. For the first three years of the ensuing brotherly competition, Lasker generally lost. With great determination, he began to study the game, especially after obtaining a copy of Jean Dufresne’s chess manual. (A thirst for revenge may also have had something to do with his determination.)

After his recovery, Lasker began visiting the Tea Salon along with Berthold. There he could see for himself how chess was played at the master level, which contributed to the rapid growth of his own ability. There, too, he first met Siegbert Tarrasch, then a student; when they first played against each other, Tarrasch was stronger. Lasker later said, I played two games against him, receiving the odds of a knight. One ended in a draw; in the other, I overlooked the loss of a rook, and lost. Two more games, at no odds, yielded a different result: once again, I lost one game, but this time I won the other. We played that game in the ‘Tea Salon.’ I remember it well. Tarrasch offered the Muzio Gambit, I accepted, and won.

When Lasker’s diversion became known back in Berlinchen, his mother’s reaction was swift and decisive. She sent him to the small town of Landsberg to ensure that he completed his studies and fulfill her dream of seeing him a professor of mathematics. In Landsberg, Lasker found only one suitable partner for chess: a student of mathematics named Kevitz, who later wrote that Lasker’s combinative abilities were already exceptionally well-developed. He advised Lasker not to spend too much time on chess, once he became a student.

In the spring of 1888, Lasker finished school, and entered the university as a philosophy major. Berthold, having finished his own studies by that time, moved to Elberfeld to set up a medical practice. Emanuel took up his brother’s chess practice in Berlin, where he could be found, more and more often, in the Tea Salon or in the Café Kaiserhof, the gathering place of the strongest chessplayers of that time. The 19-year old Lasker had apparently begun thinking more and more seriously about chess. It seemed an attractive model for his view of life as a struggle, a clash of personalities. He was also developing attitudes toward life, attitudes that reflected his distinctive breadth of knowledge and the depth of his philosophical worldview. Everything contributed to this development: his education, which required heavy mental labor in the most varied of directions – theosophy, ethics, poetry, history, natural history; his amazing mathematical abilities; his romanticism and love for nature; his mother’s legacy of decisiveness and independence. In short, within a year he began his conquest of the chess world not as a naïve youth, but as a mature man.

In the winter of 1888-89, Lasker scored his first tournament victory, in the Kaiserhof Café championship, winning every game. This result encouraged him; it also helped him financially. The victory – and subsequent success – attracted friends and supporters, whose numbers grew every month. One supporter was Jakob Bamberger, the father of his future wife, who sent him ten marks every month. By June 1889, Lasker had earned the rank of master by winning the adjunct tournament of the German Chess League in Breslau. Soon after, Lasker was invited to his first international tournament, in The Netherlands. His success in Amsterdam launched his chess career.

Family

Lasker did not marry until he was 42. Certainly his lifestyle seemed to preclude marriage; he traveled continually from country to country, as required by the increasing number of tournaments, matches, and guest appearances, and he spent long periods of time buried in his mathematical or philosophical labors. But for a while he was also preoccupied with concern for the material well-being of his parents and sisters. Then, too, for whatever reason, there just didn’t seem to be any serious relationships in his life. Not until 1902, when returning from the defense of his dissertation in Berlin, did he meet the woman who would win his heart.

Martha Kohn (née Bamberger) wrote in her reminiscences, published in Jacques Hannak’s book (1952), that they met by accident at the home of Ludwig Metzger, one of the editors of the Berliner Lokalanzeiger. Metzger’s hospitable wife loved to host evening gatherings where well-known artists, writers and musicians would be in attendance. As an employee of this newspaper, Martha attended more than once. One night, her hostess said that she wanted to introduce her to an unusual man, recently returned from America, where he had won a match for the world championship of chess – and that, in addition, he was a professor of mathematics, and a lecturer at Manchester University. Martha answered categorically, Your enthusiastic recommendations of this person rouse in me nothing but deep ingratitude. I understand nothing of mathematics, and I think chess must be terribly boring. No, my dear, he is not for me and my tastes, and so I would not be to his taste, either.

Martha and Emanuel in their Moscow apartment. 1936.

She had hardly finished these words, when Emanuel Lasker appeared, walked up to the hostess, and was introduced to Martha. She thought him withdrawn. But soon she saw that he was not at all a dry mathematician, but instead a man of wide-ranging knowledge, whose interests extended to many of the spiritual spheres.

The home of Martha and her husband Emil was also a gathering place for well-known writers and artists, and soon Lasker became one of their sought-after guests.

One day, just before leaving for his next tournament in America, Lasker presented Martha, of whom he had frequently spoken, to his mother, with these words, It is my hope that these two beings, whom I love more than anything on earth, should become friends!

Such was Lasker’s first profession of love for Martha! When the two women were left alone, Martha spoke from her heart: Honored lady – he really does not know me all that well; if he did, he would not have presented me to his mother, but to the devils themselves! To which Rosalie Lasker’s confident response was, Oh, Emanuel knows exactly what he’s saying; if he says it, then that’s what he thinks!

Martha was born in Berlin on November 19, 1867, the daughter of a future banker. Interestingly, her father, Jakob Bamberger, a lover of chess, would offer Lasker material support in the latter part of the 1880s. At that time, Martha was a student, and did not know Lasker; and by 1886, she was married to Emil Kohn, the owner of a piano factory. They had one daughter, Lotta. Some time later, Martha’s husband fell grievously ill, and became bedridden for many years.

Even at a distance, Lasker remained devoted. As he wrote in one of his letters to her: "I need only to

Reviews for Emanuel Lasker

[frankpadlajr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I like the world chess champions. Very great works now