Adolf Anderssen

Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen (July 6, 1818 - March 13, 1879) was a famous German chess master, one of the most renowned of the classic masters of 19th century chess. He had a long and distinguished chess career, at times considered the leading player in the world, and world famous for his sparkling play even today.

Background and early life

Anderssen was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1818. He lived in the city of his birth for most of his life, never married, living with and supporting his widowed mother and his unmarried sister. Anderssen graduated from the public gymnasium in Breslau, then attended university where he studied mathematics and philosophy. He graduated, and took a position at the Friedrichs Gymnasium as an instructor in 1847(27 year old) and later Professor of Mathematics. Anderssen lived a quiet, stable, responsible, respectable, middle-class life. His career was teaching math, while his hobby and passion was playing chess.

Related Topics:
Breslau - Germany - Wroclaw - Poland

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When Anderssen was nine years old, his father taught him how to play. Anderssen said that as a boy, he learned the strategy of the game from a copy of William Lewis's book Fifty Games between Labourdonnais and McDonnell(1835). Anderssen was not a chess prodigy; his progress was deliberate, and by 1840 at age twenty-two, he had not yet surpassed German masters such as Ludwig Bledow, Heyderbrandt Von der Lasa, and Wilhelm Hanstein.

Related Topics:
William Lewis - Chess prodigy - Ludwig Bledow - Heyderbrandt Von der Lasa - Wilhelm Hanstein

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Anderssen first came to the attention of the chess world when he published some short and lively chess problems in 1842. Then in 1846, he became an editor with the magazine Schachzeitung (later called Deutsche Schachzeitung).

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