Reactions

  • "On Nimzowitsch" was reviewed in "Chess on the Web", a review of 120 prominent chess-websites. (By Sarah Hurst, Batsford 1999)
    She writes:
"This site may be bliss for the serious academic who speaks German, but it is unlikely to appeal to anyone else. The best aspect of it is the opportunity to play back the Nimzowitsch-Alekhine games using Java, or to download them in PGN-format (Portable Game Notation). The site's author is Willem Jan Nijenhuis, but he hasn't added anything new since March 3, 1997. In the section on "Nimzowitsch' esthetic credo", there is a lenghty quote in German from Chess Praxis, which is rather ridiculous when the book itself is freely available in English. "Where is post-modernism in chess?" Nijenhuis asks. "Must the absence of reflection and the reliance on concrete analysis be seen as specifically post-modernistic?" Hmm... The highbrow discussion continues in 'Cultural Crosslinks' , which includes another quote in German from My System and compares Nimzowitsch with Ibsen, Eisenstein, Stanislavsky and Reinhardt, finishing triumphantly with a response to the ideas of Raymond Keene."

  • On 17 Sep 2000 Raymond Keene wrote:
    "congratulations on your outstanding nimzowitsch site
    ray keene"

  • On Saturday, 20 May 2000 Birger Flindtholt wrote:
    Hi,
    "I found your website "On Nimzowitsch", and you seem to be very interested in his adventures in Riga. I have been researching Danish chess history for a couple of years and have found two pieces of information on this period of his life. He gave an interview to the Danish Newspaper B.T. (published May 30 1930). On the question why he fled from Riga, Nimzowitsch answered "Oh, it was terrible. There was death, death everywhere." An obituary in a small local paper (Vejle Social-Demokrat, March 1935) claims that Nimzowitsch participated in the war (1st world war). In what capacity (soldier?), I don't know. After returning to Riga, he worked as a journalist. Due to political reasons the paper was closed and subsequently Nimzowitsch had to flee. I don't know who wrote the obituary, so I can't vouch for its reliability. Oh, btw, you ask about Nimzowitsch' relatives. According to "Lademanns Skakleksikon", a Danish chess encyclopaedia, his mother and a sister were living in Riga at the time of his death. Greetings from Denmark, Birger Flindtholt."

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