Talk:Nottingham 1936 chess tournament

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chess, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of chess. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.	Chess Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-Importance on the importance scale.

[edit] Emanuel Lasker's nationality

I didn't make the original edit that changed Emanuel Lasker's nationality from Germany to USSR, but I think I understand the motivation. Lasker left Germany in 1933 and never returned, and I think the German flag in 1936 should be the Swastika, which would be pretty offensive. I wouldn't call him a communist, but our bio page indicates that he accepted Soviet citizenship between 1935 and 1937. What should we do? Quale (talk) 20:54, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Get rid of the flags? Peter Ballard (talk) 22:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

That might help, but suppose the players' nationalities are given in parenthesis after their names. What do we put for Lasker? Quale (talk) 22:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

My point is that we should have no qualms about calling him German, if he was German at that stage. Or we could put nothing for Lasker - perhaps he was technically a refugee at that point? Peter Ballard (talk) 23:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually I think that would work OK, as it is my impression that Lasker was generally identified as German even in his final years spent in the U.S. The nationality thing is difficult, but I don't think we can always avoid it. It is a point of interest to encyclopedia readers. Quale (talk) 23:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Which gets us back to the flags. Technically, a German in 1936 was playing under the Swastika flag. Which of course is repugnant because Lasker as a Jew had to flee Germany. So why not remove the flags, because the players weren't representing their countries? (Though Botvinnik felt like he was). Peter Ballard (talk) 10:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Whoever changed Lasker's flag had incorrectly put "USRR", which obviously displayed gibberish, so I changed it back to Germany without thinking-- I wasn't even aware he had taken Soviet citizenship. I don't like the use of flags on Wikipedia in general, but if indeed he was a Soviet citizen at that point in his life I suppose the USSR flag is technically correct. Pawnkingthree (talk) 10:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

It is an interesting episode in Lasker's life. The Soviets offered him citizenship, an apartment in Moscow and a stipend. He accepted for a while, but left. I don't know if he technically remained a Soviet citizen or if he would be considered stateless in the last years of his life. I'm OK with removing the flags on this page given the Nazi/USSR problem. Generally I like the flags in part because they add some color to the usually drab-looking chess pages. Sometimes they do cause trouble, and this seems to be one of the cases. Nationality isn't insignificant to this tournament since its only importance is that it was an international tournament. If only UK players had participated, it wouldn't be remembered today. Look at all those Union Jacks at the bottom of the cross table. Quale (talk) 21:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)