Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa
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Tassilo, Baron von Heydebrand und der Lasa (known in English as "Baron von der Lasa", October 17, 1818, Berlin–July 27, 1899, Storchnest near Lissa, then Germany) was an important German chessmaster, chess historian and theoretician of the nineteenth century, a member of the Berlin Chess Club and a founder of the Berlin Chess School.
Von der Lasa was born 17 October 1818 in Berlin. He studied law in Bonn and Berlin. From 1845 he was a diplomat in the service of Prussia. His career took him to Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Rio de Janeiro, among other places. He retired from the diplomatic service in 1864, and thereafter devoted himself to the world of chess.
To the modern chess world he is known above all as the co-author of the Handbuch des Schachspiels, together with Paul Rudolf von Bilguer.
In 1850 von der Lasa published in the Deutsche Schachzeitung (German Chess Magazine) a call for an international chess tournament, the first ever, to be held in Trier. Instead the first such tournament was held in 1851 in London. Von der Lasa did not play in tournaments, being usually busy as an organizer, but played well in off-hand games against such leading masters as Howard Staunton and Adolf Anderssen. He was also a renowned chess investigator and theoretician, publishing numerous articles in the German Chess Magazine and, in 1897, his great work Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Schachspiels, Forschungen (Researches in the History and Literature of Chess). In the course of his researches he traveled extensively (including a trip around the world in 1887–88) and accumulated a comprehensive chess library, to which he published a catalog in 1896. In 1898 the German Chess Federation saluted his tireless efforts and accomplishments by conferring on him its first honorary membership.
One of von der Lasa's last services was to encourage HJR Murray to pursue further researches into the early history of chess. Baron von der Lasa died on 27 July 1899 in Storchnest bei Lissa, now in western Poland. His library is still intact at Kórnik Castle near Poznań.
[edit] References
- HJR Murray's A History of Chess
- Vlastimil Fiala (Ed.): Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa and his chess collection: international conference of chess historians, September 16-18 (2003). Biblioteka Kórnicka, 2003. ISBN 83-85213-38-4
