Emanuel Lasker: The Genius on the Chessboard and Among the Ideas of the Period

From a Prussian boy to a doctor of mathematics and world chess champion for 27 years—the story of Emanuel Lasker, his complicated relationship with Einstein, the intellectual clashes surrounding the theory of relativity, and the shadow that Nazi anti-Semitism cast over the game of minds.

      Doctor of Mathematics Emanuel Lasker, the second world chess champion, was born in 1868 in Berlinchen (Prussia). His father was a cantor in a synagogue and his grandfather was a rabbi. The future champion's older brother, Berthold, taught him to play chess when Emanuel moved to Berlin to study mathematics. In 1901, on the recommendation of the famous German mathematician David Hilbert, Lasker submitted his 100-page doctoral thesis "On the Theory of Modules and Ideals" to the University of Erlangen, which was published that same year.

      Professor Nathan Rosen, Einstein's colleague at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and founder of the Physics Department at the Technion, told me a story he heard from the great physicist. In 1927, Einstein met Lasker in Berlin, whom he called a "Renaissance man" and "one of the smartest people I have ever met." Rosen mentioned Lasker's erroneous approach to the theory of relativity: After publishing the astronomical observations that confirmed the results of the general theory of relativity, Lasker signed the "Pamphlet of One Hundred Authors" (1931) that criticized the theory of relativity. Lasker, who had a strong intellect, did not accept the relativity of time, which he immediately saw as arising from the basic premise of the theory of relativity - the constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum. In the introduction to Lasker's biography, written by Jacques Hanke, Einstein refers to Lasker's original, but erroneous, criticism of the theory of relativity. The actor could not accept the revolution in perceptions of space and time that relativity brought.

      The world champion was a stranger to Einstein in many ways, although Einstein appreciated in the chess player a "rare independence of personality" that "combined with a keen interest in all the great problems of humanity." The spirit of competition, which possessed Lasker throughout his life, was alien to Einstein, who wrote: "Personally, the struggle for power and the spirit of competition, even in the form of a high-level intellectual game, have always been alien to me." Einstein noted that Lasker's personality "made a certain tragic impression on me." He wrote: "The enormous intellectual tension, without which it is impossible to be a chess player, was so closely bound up in his consciousness with chess that this spirit of the game never left him, even when he was pondering philosophical or human problems."

      Einstein came to a dubious conclusion about his interlocutor: he believed that chess was not the goal, but only Lasker's profession. He compared chess in the life of the second world champion to lens polishing in the life of Spinoza. He argued that lenses were a means of livelihood for Spinoza, and chess was a means of livelihood for Lasker. He believed that Spinoza was happier than Lasker, since lens polishing left more freedom of thought than playing chess. In Einstein's opinion, Lasker's main goal was science. It is difficult to say whether Einstein was wrong about Lasker or fantasizing. It is possible that the brilliant psychologist Emanuel Lasker imposed his game on his interlocutor, that is, the image of himself that he wanted to inspire in him. Einstein wanted to see him as a scientist and thinker. In reality, Lasker was first and foremost a professional player. Starting in 1888, he played chess for money in Berlin cafes. He played almost until his last day. For 27 years (1894-1921) he was the world champion and king of chess, but even after losing the title he played chess for almost 20 years, achieving excellent results and even outranking Capablanca in tournaments, who robbed him of the crown of world chess champion. Lasker loved to play in general, not just chess. He played bridge and Go excellently. In the 1930s he was a member of the German bridge team. Together with his distant relative Edward Lasker, he was one of the distributors of the game of Go, which was brought from Japan to Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1929 Lasker published the book "Card Game Strategy". He was undoubtedly a great player, not a scientist and thinker.

      In 1933, Lasker and his wife Martha, granddaughter of the famous composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, fled as Jews from Nazi persecution in Germany. The Nazis confiscated their property and took their home. The couple moved to England. Lasker had left-wing views, and the Soviet Union, where he had already visited tournaments, attracted him more than capitalist England. At the invitation of the People's Commissar for Justice, that is, the Minister of Justice of the USSR, the great chess enthusiast Nikolai Krylenko, he moved from England to the USSR in 1935. Since professional sports were not recognized in the USSR, Lasker registered as an employee at the Institute of Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The couple received an apartment in the center of Moscow. Lasker represented the Soviet Union in competitions and was a correspondent for the newspaper "Soviet Sport", covering the world chess championship match between Alexander Alekhine and the Dutch Jew Max Aieva in the Netherlands.

      In 1937, mass repressions began in the Soviet Union. One of the first to be arrested was Kirilenko, who loved chess and headed the Soviet Chess Association. Kirilenko was the person Lasker could turn to at any moment, who came to visit him, and sometimes came to the Lasker family for Sunday dinners. Kirilenko was accused of spying for Germany. During the bloody trials of 1937, other chess players, people close to Kirilenko, were also arrested. Among them was the four-time Moscow champion, Nikolai Grigoriev. Lasker was terrified. The Lasker family applied for visas to the United States, bought round-trip air tickets, left their Berlin furniture and all their belongings in their Moscow apartment, and left the Soviet Union forever.

      The arrested players were tortured to extract evidence against Kirilenko. Grigoriev was beaten to the point that he was unable to answer questions. But suddenly Grigoriev was released from prison. From him he learned about the investigators' attempts to implicate Lasker in the Kirilenko affair.

     Although Lasker's father was a cantor and his grandfather was a rabbi, the player himself was far from Judaism and Jewish ideas. However, in 1911 he published an article in a Viennese chess newspaper about the reasons for the interest of Jews in the game of chess and their large number among chess players. He believed that due to difficult historical conditions, Jews developed a strong imagination and willpower - components necessary for a chess player. In addition, the Jews were poor, many professions were not allowed and accessible to them, hence the tendency of Jews to unusual professions related to the stage, writing and even chess. Although playing chess cannot be considered a profession that brings a steady income, it allows you to stand out from the crowd, and "it is easier to bear poverty when you are aware that you are an extraordinary person" [successfully in chess competitions].  

      The subject of "Jews in Chess" interested the Russian Grandmaster Alexander Alekhine, the fourth and undefeated World Champion. Alekhine gave his interpretation of the Jewish attraction to chess and their contribution to the development of the game in a publication that appeared 30 years after Lasker's article and two months after his death. Alekhine attributed malicious Jewish ideas to Lasker in a series of articles entitled "Aryan and Jewish Chess", published in German in the Netherlands and France.

Nazi-occupied newspapers Die Deutsche Zeitung in den Niederlanden ("The German Newspaper in the Netherlands") and Pariser Zeitung ("The Parisian Newspaper") between March 18 and 23, 1941. This publication was a repeat of the notoriously racist anti-Semitic article by German composer Richard Wagner "Judaism in Music" (1850). Alekhine wrote: "Is it possible to hope that with the death of Lasker - the death of the second and probably the last world champion in chess of Jewish origin - Aryan chess, which, due to the Jewish defensive idea, went astray, will find its way back to world chess? Please do not let me be too optimistic about this, since Lasker has taken root and left behind a few followers, who will still be able to cause great harm to world chess. Lasker's great fault as a leading chess player has many aspects, […] He did not think for a single moment to convey to the chess world a single creative thought of his own. […] The idea of ​​the attack as a joyful and creative idea was foreign to the chess master Lasker, and in this sense Lasker was the natural successor of Steinitz (Wilhelm Steinitz is the first world champion in chess, also a Jew. - A. G.), the greatest clown that the history of chess has ever known."

      Alekhine, who proposed the idea of ​​"Aryan chess" and "Jewish chess", thought in the spirit of the Nazi ideologists, who invented the "correct", experimental Aryan physics, and the "wrong", theoretical Jewish physics. In the same context, he criticized one of Lasker's students, Grand Master Aaron Nimetzovich, using racist terminology: "Aaron Nimetzovich, a Jew from Riga, belongs more to the era of Capablanca (the third world champion) than to the era of Lasker. His instinctive anti-Aryan chess perception was strangely influenced - unconsciously and against his will - by the aggressive Slavic-Russian ideology (Chigorin! - a prominent Russian chess player - A.G.). I say subconsciously, because it is difficult to even imagine how much he hated us, the Russians, us, the Slavs!"     

      Alekhine wrote even more clearly about the "destructive" role of Lasker and "Jewish thought in chess" in the history of chess: "The unity of the destructive, purely Jewish thought in chess (Steinitz - Lasker - Rubinstein - Nimetzowitz - Reti) is becoming increasingly clear, which for half a century has hindered the logical development of our chess art." The idea of ​​accusing Lasker after his death of creating "Jewish chess", "wrong" was in the spirit of the motives of the extermination of the Jews, which was already in full swing in Europe of that time. At the European chess tournament in Munich in September 1941, in which Alekhine participated as a representative of Vichy France, his table was decorated with a flag with a swastika. Alekhine was wrong: Lasker was not "the last world champion of Jewish origin", after him other Jews also won the chess crown.

      In 1940, Lasker published the political essay "The Society of the Future," in which he detailed many of his ideas for creating an ideal society. Two issues occupied a central place in his reflections: the fate of European Jews, which had worsened due to the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, and widespread unemployment worldwide. To solve the first problem, Lasker proposed Alaska as a possible refuge for Jewish immigrants. He defined unemployment as one of the main reasons for hatred towards Jews. His remedy for the unemployment problem was the establishment of communities modeled on the kibbutzim in Israel, with the aim of training people for the labor market.

      Lasker died before he learned about the Holocaust of the Jewish people. He was immersed in the game and did not imagine that a vast blood conspiracy against the Jews could develop around him, and that the chessboard would also be covered in the bloody shadow of the future moves of the Jewish genocide.