Lothar Schmid

[Mick Norris]

Auction of memorabilia

[James Pratt]

Is ticketed? Or can I just walk in? Or what .. ?
James

[John Townsend]

The catalogue is available now:

https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction ... ollections

The lots are mostly antiquarian.

A bright spot, for me, is Lot 46: two manuscript note books kept by Löwenthal. It would be useful from the angle of chess historical research if the whereabouts of important manuscript material could be made known. Otherwise it simply disappears in the direction of an unknown bidder.

[John Townsend]

Incidentally, returning to Lot 46, Löwenthal is quoted as having written to Anderssen regarding Staunton:

"...den Sie im Jahre 1851 moralisch den Garaus gemacht haben..."

One supposes this letter was written after Löwenthal's quarrel with Staunton, since he had previously been supportive of him.

[John Townsend]

Query:

Shouldn't the quotation above read " ... dem Sie ..." rather than " ... den Sie ..."?

[Tim Harding]

The Lowenthal lot sold for £7040 GBP.

[John Townsend]

The question is: where is it now, and will any form of access be possible for researchers? The best outcome would be if it has been purchased by a library, but that is not likely.

[Tim Harding]

The question is: where is it now, and will any form of access be possible for researchers? The best outcome would be if it has been purchased by a library, but that is not likely.

I agree it is not likely. Unfortunately at the time this auction was "live" I wasn't reading the Forum and was unaware the sale was upcoming or I might have written to the British Library suggesting they bid. They probably did not do so, even if they were aware of it.

Unfortunately the few page images on the Sothebys website did not include any game scores. However...

A few years ago the late GM Robert Huebner wrote some articles for a now-defunct magazine, Caissa, based on game scores which he said he had found in a Loewenthal MS notebook which had been sold in the 1920s in the Rimington Wilson auction. I thought at the time that he should have stated (following normal academic practice) who had possession of the MS. I was unable to learn more, but of course we know now that he must have been given sight of them by Schmid's executors as I suspected. They probably wanted his evaluation of their value. Maybe a condition of his being allowed to write articles based on them was that the ownership wasn't divulged.

One of the games that Huebner found in the notebook(s) was a hitherto missing game from the Blackburne-Steinitz match of 1862, a great find. (That game was unavailable for my Blackburne book but is included in Steinitz in London.) Others (which formed the subject of his second article) were from the British Chess Association congress of 1867/8 and the articles included several previously unknown games.

Whether these notebooks include any other game scores we shall probably not discover unless the new owner gives access to historians to read them.

I did (I am glad to say) have a brief and amicable conversation with Huebner at the conclusion of a simul he gave in Dresden in 2022 during the European Senior Team Championships during which I asked him whether he was doing any more chess history. He said no, he was working on ancient Greek.

[John Townsend]

Tim mentioned the British Library as a possible bidder for the Löwenthal lot if he had written to them. Years ago, in an earlier incarnation, I became aware of the trifling budgets which some British archives and record offices had for purchasing manuscripts. Some of these budgets wouldn't run to buying a packet of fags, let alone a £7,000 auction lot. As repositories for such material, they are almost ideal, but, as suppliers of the purchase money, most of them are useless. Whether the British Library would be any different, I can't say. The money might have to come from other sources. (That might be possible, and sometimes the archivists may have access to trusts or funds which can be tapped for special purposes).

Chess historians would be in a better position if dealers, collectors and auctioneers contributed information to some kind of register of chess manuscripts. Here, a comparable register comes to mind: the Manorial Documents Register, as there is a legal requirement in England and Wales to declare manorial documents that come into one's possession. In the analogous case of chess manuscripts, such contributions to a register would have to be voluntary, but it could well be that many would be happy to co-operate knowing that their efforts would be helping to advance the cause of chess history.

As for a body to maintain such a register, it would need to be strongly motivated towards the advancement of chess history. I'm not sure if that applies to any UK body. There is the Chess History and Literature Society, which includes some British members, but its activity is largely on the continent.

These are fanciful ideas at this stage, but there is no harm in exploring such issues.