Chess Auction - Antiquariat A. Klittich-Pfankuch 21st November 2020

 

The auction house Antiquariat A. Klittich-Pfankuch held its bi-annual chess auction last week with many rare and important books, manuscripts and other collectable items going under the hammer. Recent auctions in Braunschweig have included many rare items from the library of the late Lothar Schmid and again, some of the choicest items came from this source.

Approximately 750 lots of books included the following Schachraritäten:      

An Inquiry into the Antient Greek Game, supposed to have been invented by Palamedes..., by James Christie, London 1801 which sold for €1,200; the first printing of the first edition of Philidor's L'Analyze des Echecs, London 1749 - €1,600; and a later printing in the same year - €950.  

 

A rare work by Allesandro Salvio: Il Giuoco degli Scacchi, published in 1723, around 80 years after his death, made €1,100; The first comprehensive chess treatise published in Germany - Das Schach-oder König-Spiel by Gustavus Selenus, Leipzig 1616, bound with another non-chess work dated 1624, realised €2,700. A very rare book by von der Lasa: Entwurf eines Vollständigen Reglements für das Schachspiel, Berlin 1854 made €950, and Lolli's Osservazioni Teorica-Pratiche Sopra il Giuucco degli Scacchi, Bologna 173 sold for €700.

 

Several modern books fetched high prices including one of the 20 vellum bound copies of David DeLucia's Chess Library, 2nd edition 2007 which sold for €900 and a two volume work by Rolf Roth: Schach in meinem Leben, Wetzikon circa 2010, described as an "Interesting contribution to Swiss chess history" sold for €1,000.

Harrie Grondijs's extremely limited edition books continue to be in great demand with several selling for between €200 and €460, but the highest price paid was €1,600 for his five volume series Chess Craze Bad, Maastricht 2015 - 2020.  

 

Several books on draughts were on offer in this auction and an 1811 work by Johann Koch: Das Damenspiel, auf feste Reguin gebracht... realised the top price of €400. A 1650 work by Canalejas Garcia: Libro del Juego de las Damas.. sold for €301.

The tournament books included Cleveland 1871 by Brownson which sold for €400; Kiev 1903 by Chigorin - €420; and New York 1889 by Steinitz - €480.

 

The Zeitschriften included a complete three volume run of American Chess Magazine, 1897 - 1899 which made €500; the first volume of The British Chess Magazine, 1881 - €300 (good value); Le Palamède two volumes 1838 and 1839 - €380; and  a scarce year of Wiener Schachzeitung for 1915 - €400.

 

However, the items most in demand were the autographed books, manuscript items and other pieces of memorabilia. Books signed or inscribed by famous players are very desirable and the following examples went under the hammer:

Das Grossmeister-Turnier New York 1924, inscribed by Alekhine - €450

Die Moderne Schachpartie, with a dedication from Tarrasch - €500

Die Praxis Meines Systems, with  a 9 line inscription by Nimzowitsch - €600

 

Grundzüge der Schachstrategie (the German edition of Chess Fundamentals), signed by Capablanca at Bad Kissingen 1928 - €1,200

 

 

The Community of the Future, signed by Emanuel Lasker - €1,300

Kampf von Emanuel Lasker , with a dedication from the author - €1,800 

The rare book on The Third American Chess Congress, Cleveland 1874, signed by the winner George Mackenzie, sold for €2,300

 

But the most highly prized items are original letters and manuscripts by the leading masters of the past, and many were put up for sale here:

A manuscript notebook with 23 pages written by Tal sold for €800.

A handwritten 5 page tournament report and two letters by Alekhine fetched €800, €950 and €1,900.

A letter from Richard Reti pasted into Modern Ideas in Chess sold for €1,100.

Moving up a gear; 3 letters written by Adolf Anderssen in the 1850s sold for €2,900, €3,000 and €3,700, Morphy is mentioned in the last of these.

 

A bound volume of Löwenthal's chess columns from the Era for the years 1854 to 1866 with an 18 page list of contents written in Lowenthal's hand made €4,000.

 

Siegbert Tarrasch's handwritten manuscript for his book Der Schachwettkampf Marshall - Tarrasch 1905, also sold for €4,000.

The auction (and the auctioneer) reached a crescendo with the sale of a notebook written by Rudolf Spielmann in which he had annotated 80 of his games played between 1900 and 1905, the hammer finally falling at €6,600; and a single page letter written by Paul Morphy to Miron Hazeltine regarding an invitation to the St. Louis Chess Club, dated May 1859, which also sold for €6,600.

 

 

Chess related photographs and postcards are always popular and the Schachmemorabilia section incuded a large number of these with many lots selling for between €300 and €700. A remarkable collection of cuttings and adverts on the theme of chess in films, with many photos of chess scenes in the movies sold for €1,100, and the next lot, which was also from the Couwenbergh Collection, on the theme of chess and music, sold for €1,200. This included many record sleeves featuring a chess motif. 

Charles Aznavour seems to be playing Fischerrandom chess.

Other lots selling for high prices included a postcard featuring caricatures of participants in the Candidates Tournament at Bled-Zagreb-Belgrade, 1959, with their signatures - €900;  two manuscripts on problems by William Bone - €850 and €2,100;  a beautifully executed manuscript from the J W Rimington Wilson library with games and positions from the works of Captain Bertin, Stamma, The Calabrois and others - €1,300;  a typescript containing 50 self-mates by Miroslav Soukup with a handwritten dedication to A C White - €1,600; and a collection of 16 autographed photo postcards featuring the participants at Podebrad 1936 - €2,400.

 

 

The 1,100 plus lots were  auctioned off in around seven hours with prices from €10 upwards, so there were plenty of items for all pockets. The following less expensive but still desirable books all sold for €50 or less:

The printed 266 page auction catalogue is a collector's item in itself and a very useful reference work, while every lot was meticulously described and illustrated in the online catalogue. 

The auction was admirably organised and conducted by Karl Klittich and his team, and they are fortunate indeed to enjoy so many rare and historical chess artefacts passing through their hands.

Many thanks to Karl Klittich for permission to use extracts and illustrations from the catalogue.

The hammer prices quoted above exclude the buyer's premium and other costs.

 

 

 

 

  

 

Chess Book Auction - Antiquariat A. Klittich-Pfankuch

 

The auction house Antiquariat A. Klittich-Pfankuch is holding its 79th Auction in Braunschweig, Germany next weekend. 

 

This bi-annual event is predominantly an auction of chess books and related items, and on Saturday 21st November there will be over 1,100 chess items going under the hammer.

 

Every lot is described in detail in the 266 page catalogue and all lots are also fully described and illustrated in the online catalogue.

The first 382 chess lots consist of chess sets, memorabilia, photographs, paintings and autographed & manuscript items.  This auction is particularly strong in the last named items with over 200 lots including rare autographed or hand-written items by such as Alekhine, Adolf Anderssen, Henry Bird, Bogoljubow, Capablanca, Emanuel Lasker, Löwenthal, Jacques Mieses, Paul Morphy, Nimzowitsch, Reti, Rudolf Spielmann, Tarrasch and many others.

Then comes almost 750 books and periodicals beginning with the Schachraritäten followed by books sorted into various languages, just over 100 tournament books, and over 200 lots of Zeitschriften.

The fully illustrated online catalogue is a mouthwatering feast for enthusiasts and collectors of chess literature and memorabilia.  

 

Bobby Fischer's final tournament; Palma de Mallorca 1970

Fifty years ago this month Bobby Fischer played in his last ever major chess tournament, the Interzonal Chess Tournament held in Palma de Mallorca, before embarking on the series of Candidates matches leading to the World Championship match with Spassky in 1972. (Fischer also played in a minor blitz tournament in Manhattan in August 1971, shortly after his Candidates semi-final match with Larsen, winning with a score of 21½ points out of 22.)

Several books were published on the event including three fully or partly in the English Language; two of these will be discussed here.

Interzonal Chess Tournament; Palma de Mallorca 1970, edited by R.G.Wade and L.S.Blackstock, Nottingham 1970.

 

This gruelling 23 round tournament ran from 9th November to 13th December 1970 and copies of this book were on sale at the annual Hastings Congress in early January 1971 due partly to Tony Gillam, the publisher, pounding away for many hours on his Linotype casting machine.

This high quality tournament included 15 Grandmasters and 9 International Masters, all battling for the six available places in the Candidates, for which Petrosian and Korchnoi were already qualified. Fischer's participation was in doubt until just a few weeks before the event as explained on page 10 of the book:

Benko still attended the tournament as second to both Reshevsky and Addison.

Considerable planning had been made by chief arbiter Albéric O'Kelly de Galway and assistant arbiter George Koltanowski, aiming at the fairest and most acceptable pairings throughout the tournament, in particular to ensure that players from the same country met each other in the earlier rounds. Unfortunately this all went out of the window due to a mix up at the drawing of lots resulting in considerable chaos and dissatisfaction among the players. Nevertheless, with a small amout of switching of rounds, the tournament proceeded fairly smoothly.

For each round, Wade and Blackstock's book provides a succinct but informative summary of the play plus some off the board snippets. The authors obviously had their ears to the ground, and followed the play perceptively. Almost all of the 276 games are entertainingly annotated, often with the help of comments from the players or their seconds, and occasional diagrams are shown at key moments. Here is the summary for round 17:

Obviously, with so many games to cover in a 232 page book, there is a lot to squeeze in and every page of the book, apart from the 24 full page portraits, is packed with text, there is very little white space. However, the layout is clear and the book is easy and enjoyable to read.  

Following his big margin wins in Buenos Aires and Rovinj - Zagreb earlier in the year, Bobby Fischer continued in his  outstanding form and qualified for the Candidates matches in no uncertain manner.

Fischer took the lead in round 5 after defeating Vlastimil Hort, overtaking the Mongolian outsider Tudev Uitumen who had won his first three games. In round 9 Fischer lost his only game of the tournament to Bent Larsen, allowing Efim Geller to catch him up. The much anticipated Fischer v Larsen game was adjourned after white's 46th move and was promptly published with notes in the official daily bulletin before the game was resumed. The bulletin even gave the winning line for black from the adjourned position!

Draws in the next two rounds (including round 11 where he played 1.c4 for the first time in a serious game) left Fischer ½ point behind Geller after 11 rounds. However Fischer beat Geller in round 12 (he had lost their three previous encounters) and regained the lead. Fischer was still only ½ point ahead after 16 rounds but then pulled right away from the field by winning each of his last seven games (his last round win was a walk-over as Panno declined to play). Fischer won the tournament with a score of 18½; 3½ points clear of the three runners up, Larsen, Geller and Huebner. This seven game winning run was the start of his remarkable sequence of 20 successive wins before eventually losing the second game of his final Candidates match against Petrosian.

Fischer's biographer Frank Brady described this victory as "one of the outstanding accomplishments of his career and one of the most remarkable results achieved by any player at any time in the long history of the game" on page 179 of the updated edition of Profile of a Prodigy, David Mckay, New York 1973 (published by Batsford in London 1974 under the title of Bobby Fischer). On the same page Brady quotes a prophetic remark by Najdorf following this event: "He'll have to concede two points to the rest of the players to make any future tournament in which he competes interesting to all"   

 

The following photographs show the six qualifiers for the Candidates matches: (Although these photographs are in the Palma 1970 book, the portraits of Fischer, Larsen and Geller were taken at the Siegen Olympiad in September 1970)

Clockwise: Fischer, Larsen, Geller and Huebner)

 

Taimamov and Uhlmann

Fischer did not enter any of his games for the Best Game Prize (won by Wolfgang Uhlmann for his round 13 game against Uitumen), but the following game against Rubinetti was considered as one of his best by the editors Wade and Blackstock:
 

 

Following on from the final comment made in the article: Fischer's Participation, the editors published a correction on page 222:

 

 

However, this is at odds with David Levy's comments on page 135 of the Christmas 1970 Chess magazine in which he stated that Fischer had reputedly been paid $15,000 to play.

The book concludes with a three page Tournament Survey summarising each player's performance and commenting on the event generally.

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Souvenir Book/Buch; VII Interzonal Ajedrez; Palma de Mallorca 1970, produced and published by The Chess Player (Tony Gillam), Nottingham 1971.

 

This was actually the 8th Interzonal tournament and not the 7th as stated on the title page.

This high quality production was published in a limited edition of 600 copies and consists almost entirely of 115 full page photographs from the event printed on glossy paper. The small amount of text is in either English, German or Spanish. The book includes a list of the 24 competitors, a calendar of the 23 rounds, four pages with 52 facsimile signatures of the players, officials and others, and the menu from the closing banquet.

 

Other than that it is photographs all the way through, including many close-up shots of the players. The book states that all but one of the photographs are by David Levy, the exception being by Gerhard Bruckner. 

 

 

There seems to have been an embargo on photos of Fischer at Palma de Mallorca as there is not a single close-up of him at the chessboard in either of these two books, although there are plenty of most of the other competitors. The Souvenir Book does have three full page photos of Fischer but these were all taken at the Siegen Olympiad held two months earlier. There are  two other photos in which Fischer appears; one showing him in discussion with chief arbiter O'Kelly de Galway after his sixth round win against Reshevsky, and in the other he is being presented with the winner's trophy.

Two further photos feature the board ready for Fischer's game against Minic, and the demonstration board showing the final position after his win against Uhlmann in round 18.

 

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The British Chess Magazine for January 1971 has a long report on the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal on pages 1 to 21 by Harry Golombek who attended the final two weeks of the event. A couple of interesting comments from his report:

1. Raising the matter of Fischer's debacle at the Interzonal Tournament in Sousse in 1967, where he withdrew when in the lead after 14 rounds on account of several well documented disagreements with the organisers, Golombek asks how the Palma organisers managed to keep him placated throughout. Golombek states that both O'Kelly de Galway and Koltanowski informed him: "The perfect and obvious solution was found by acceding to all Fischer's demands"

2. Reflecting on Fischer's game against Minic, Golombek comments "...Fischer had little difficulty in winning, even though, to those of us who had been accustomed to seeing players like Alekhine and Capablanca dispose of lesser players with the utmost accuracy in the ending and with a corresponding elegance, it was rather painful to witness the imprecise, almost amateur, way in which this particular ending was conducted. Still, note that one instinctively compares Fischer with such figures as Alekhine and Capablanca; there are few such in the long history of the game."   

I would like to thank Tony Gillam of The Chess Player publishing company for pemission to include extracts and photographs from his two books, and also Owen Hindle for his assistance.