Unzicker was born on 26 June 1925 in Pirmasens, a small town near
Kaiserslautern in the province of Rhineland-Palatinate. This now
retired judge celebrated his 80th birthday together
with his wife Freia, his three sons and their wives as well as
with three grand-children. In addition, a gala event will be
staged in his honour during the upcoming Chess Classic Mainz on
August 9th and 10th. The gala event will
start at 16:00 hours. Unzicker, who played for the German national
chess team a record-breaking 386 times, will be joined by three
legends of chess: Anatoly Karpov, Viktor Korchnoi and Boris
Spassky. “I will be more than pleased to meet my old chess-buddies
and friends. The results of the chess matches will be of lesser
importance” says the guest of honour, adding modestly
“Considering the quality of this line-up, I have no illusions
about my chances in this tournament.”
Referee of this tournament will be his long-time companion Lothar
Schmid. The Bamberg-based publisher of the “Karl May” novels and
chess grandmaster was recently voted the “Referee of the Century”,
honouring his achievement when he diplomatically guided the highly
explosive title match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in
Iceland in 1972. Both Schmid and Unzicker are regular visitors of
the rapid chess Tournaments in Mainz, a citz that is sometimes
dubbed the “Mekka of rapid chess”. Tournament director Hans-Walter
Schmitt considered it to be a special honour to present a great
stage to a “Grandmaster, who achieved such a high level of play
and represented Germany’s national chess team nearly 400 times,
especially when you consider that he was an amateur and had a
professional career.”
 |
|
Wolfgang Unzicker (zweiter von rechts) im Jahre 1939 |
|
Despite his age, the grandmaster still plays tournament chess
regularly with his team from the chess club “Tarrasch Munich”,
competing in the “Oberliga” on board number one. The retired judge
does not want to give up the 32 pieces altogether: “You have to be
aware of the fact that at my age, the time of success has passed”,
is how Unzicker explains his personal outlook on the game, which
ensures that he can still derive pleasure from the 64 squares of
the chess board. Nevertheless, he admires Viktor Korchnoi, who is
six years younger: “It is amazing that Korchnoi is still playing
at such a high level. He is a fighter with an iron will. At the
chess board, he is very versatile: strong in combinations and a
giant of the endgame. A slight weakness, which may have prevented
him from capturing the world championship title is his Zeitnot and
his tendency to overextend positions. Sometimes, attacks by his
opponent evaporated like water in the desert”. Unzicker’s son
Alexander once quipped “You are very good in the endgame, but
Korchnoi is even better!” All three sons of Unzicker followed in
his foot-steps in addition to Alexander, Ferdinand is also a chess
player with an personal all-time high of 2305 ELO points, while
Stefan played chess only for a short time.
In addition to his work in the legal area, Unzicker acted as legal
advisor to the German Chess Associations for many years. “I never
had the desire to become a professional chess player – this seemed
to be a risky proposition in the Western World. Also, I did not
want to dedicate my entire life to chess” - explains Unzicker.
Despite his hesitations to chose the career of a professional
chess player, he celebrated many sweet victories as an amateur,
being ranked the best amateur in the world at times.
His tournament highlights include the first place he shared with
Boris Spassky in the Sotchi tournament in 1965, his victories in
Maribor and Krems as well as the Chess Olympiad in Tel Aviv in
1964. The still vital Unzicker commented: “These are tournaments I
am very proud of”. Especially during the Tel Aviv tournament he
showed a brilliant performance, winning the bronze medal and a 3:1
team victory over the Soviet Union. Playing on the first board,
the Bavarian resident scored 13:5 points. Securing the third place
finish were Lothar Schmid, Helmut Pfleger, Klaus Darga, Jürgen
Mohrlok and the late Wolfram Bialas.
The fourth place that Unzicker shared with Lajos Portisch in 1966
at the Piatigorsky-Cup in Santa Monica (California) was regarded
as an outstanding result. While other players such as Boris
Spassky, Bobby Fischer and Bent Larsen finished ahead of Unzicker,
he points out who was behind him in the final ranks: “It was very
important to me to place ahead of world champion Tigran Petrosjan,
Samuel Reshevsky, Miguel Najdorf, Borislav Ivkov and Hein Donner.”
World renowned classical cello musician Gregor Piatigorsky, who
organised this world class chess event, characterised Unzicker as
follows: “With his smart appearance, cleanly shaven and wearing a
stylish suit, he was the perfect image of orderliness. The clicks
of his heels revealed an unbending tradition and his eyes and
laughter demonstrated the kindness of his heart. It was during
these weeks that Unzicker gained the reputation of a person
endowed with profound opinions and a powerful intellect. I enjoyed
our conversations in German and wished that everybody could
understand the feelings and thoughts of this friendly and
cultivated man.”
At the age of ten, Wolfgang learned the game of chess more or less
by chance from his father, a High school teacher. The son did not
want to be an outsider. His brother, who was four years older and
would later be killed in the Second World War, already knew how to
play chess. His two best buddies also played chess avidly during
the summer of 1935. It was this environment as well as his visits
to the Chess Olympiad in 1936, which motivated Unzicker: “In full
concentration, the young boy watched the game in which Kurt
Richter sacrificed a Rook and a Bishop in a famous combination
against Rumanian Gheorghe Alexandrescu”, explained Harald Fietz in
the review of Unzicker’s chess live at the Lasker-Society in 2003.
He further outlined “from now on, the book “correct combinations!”
by Richter would be a source of inspiration”. Looking back,
Unzicker considers himself to be a tactical fighter rather than a
cool strategic player.
In the post-war era, invitations to chess tournaments offered one
invaluable advantage: all participants were supplied with
sufficient meals. Together with Fritz Sämisch, Unzicker was the
first German player in 1948 to obtain an invitation to play
abroad. In Lucerne (Switzerland) he immediately reached first
place. His career developed nicely, not only due to the good
nourishment he received during these years. And he considered his
play “still to be less than perfect: the capitalisation of
strategic advantages, who were not yet sufficient to secure a
victory, was not yet as well developed in me as in players like
Botvinnik, Smyslov or Karpov. It was especially Karpov who
squeezed the winning margins out of every position”, explained
Unzicker and knocked on the table just to underscore his argument:
“this was missing from my play”.
The judge is also quite self-critical about his chances in the big
league of chess: the world championship was somewhat out of his
reach, even if he had been be a state-sponsored professional
player according to the Soviet model. “I could have achieved the
participation at a candidates qualifying tournament, but even
Keres, Korchnoi or Geller did not manage to step up to the
throne”. Unzicker rates these three players – “with some
reservations as far as Evgeni Geller is concerned”, as chess
players who had the qualification to become world champion, but
never pulled it off. In this group, Unzicker would also include
players such as Zukertort, Rubinstein, Tarrasch and Bronstein.
When Unzicker mentions the names of the three legends
participating in his birthday gala in the Rheingoldhalle in Mainz,
he can not help but to get exited: “Korchnoi is one of the most
demanding challengers ever. In this respect, he was superior to
Keres or Smyslov, even though his play lacked somewhat the
elegance these two grandmasters displayed”. When Korchnoi
celebrated his 70th birthday in 2001 in Zurich,
Unzicker cited in his birthday speech a quote from Tarrasch.
Tarrasch gave high marks to three champions having always
performed with consistently high: Morphy, Pillsbury and Lasker”.
Unzicker added the multiple vice world champion Korchnoi, who
narrowly lost against Karpov.
Karpov remarks that Unzicker is the “world champion of amateurs”
whose games everybody should study. Unzicker returns the
compliment and considers world champion Karpov as the champion
with most victories in tournament play (a total of 161 first
places), “undoubtedly belonging to the greatest of the great chess
players in history. It was, however, a sad and sorrow situation
that he never had an opportunity to play against Bobby Fischer in
1975.” Unzicker, who managed to beat Bobby Fischer once, would
assess that Fischer had better chances in this clash of giants,
but in the ensuing years Karpov demonstrated “that he rightfully
earned the world champion title and he was simply the best for
some years to come.”
The German record-holding national team player also holds another
grandmaster attending his chess classic gala in high esteem.
“Spassky is in many respects the exact opposite of the fighter
Korchnoi. But when challenged, the Russian bear he may become a
very dangerous animal indeed. Spassky was a natural talent, one of
the greatest talents ever. It took a genius like Bobby Fischer to
limit Spassky’s reign as world champion to just 3 years, from 1969
to 1972. “Against Bobby Fischer, everybody would have been second
winner”, remarked Unzicker.
Even at 80 years of age, the special guest is a fascinating
key-note speaker, who never gives boredom a chance. Many stories
come to his mind. In one of them, an old gentleman who was quite
jittery once touched a piece on the board.
His opponent insisted that he also must move this piece. With some
understatement Unzicker remarked “He is not quite the role model
of a gentleman.” His friend Ludek Pachmann favoured more direct
language: “You have a strange way of expressing yourself. Say that
he is a pig and you are telling the truth”.
Pachmann is at the centre of another one of Unzicker’s stories. At
the reception of the famous chess congress in Hastings in
1954/1955, the man from Prague reported that his mother had
switched the positions of Knight and Bishop on the board when she
taught him the game of chess. Paul Keres quipped “that is
something one needs to keep in mind when studying your opening
books”. The Estonian proved his quick wit at a meeting witch the
Dutchman Max Euwe in Varna. When the ex-champion spoke about the
legendary game he played against Alexander Alekhine in Zurich in
1934, the following exchange developed: “When I sacrificed my
knight, Alekhine took off his jacket.” Paul Keres: “and if you had
sacrificed your queen, Alekhine would most likely have taken off
his trousers…”
----ooo----
More on Unzicker’s games
are available on a CD-ROM from ChessBase (Euro 25,50, ISBN
3-935602-48-0). The Cologne-based chess historian Hans-Dieter
Müller published in 2003 a biography containing 1750 games,
outlining the career of Unzicker. 30 Minutes of video scenes with
Wolfgang Unzicker are included as highlights.
Hartmut Metz
Published by Gerhard Kenk
Dieser Artikel wurde 9811 Mal aufgerufen.