Grandmasters I Have Known
by Hans Kmoch

Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

"He pretends to be crazy in order to drive us all crazy." This was Tartakower's dictum on his colleague Nimzovich.

The man was not exactly crazy, but he did have certain marked peculiarities, which I had ample opportunity to observe during the nine years I knew him.

We first met at Baden-Baden in 1925 and quickly became good friends when I innocently told him how much I had enjoyed the game he had won against Rosselli. Nimzovich suffered from the delusion that he was unappreciated and that the reason was malice. All it took to make him blossom, as I later learned, was a little praise. His paranoia was most evident when he dined in company. He always thought he was served much smaller portions than everyone else. He didn't care about the actual amount but only about the imagined affront. I once suggested that he and I order what the other actually wanted and, when the food was served, exchange plates. After we had done so, he shook his head in disbelief, still thinking that he had received the smaller portion.

He was born in Riga, the capital of Latvia, which in czarist times had a strong German culture as well as a good reputation in chess. The chess column of the *Riga Tagblatt* was well-known in Europe, and the Riga Variation of the Ruy Lopez (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 a6 4 Ba4 Nf6 5 0-0 Nxe4 6 d4 exd4) had considerable significance for a long time until Capablanca demolished it in 1915. In the atmosphere of his hometown, Nimzovich learned to speak German with the skill of an actor and to play chess like a master.

The Russian word nyem-tso-vitch, with the stress on the first syllable, can be translated as "son of a German." In the Latin alphabet the name has appeared in a variety of spellings, none of them specifically sanctioned by its owner, as far as I know. The most common form in English is Nimzovich, though it
misrepresents the correct pronunciation of the first vowel.

When civil war broke out in Russia around 1917, Nimzovich was trapped in the Baltic war zone between the rightists and leftists. He escaped forced service in one of the armies by complaining so insistently about a fly on his head that they finally left the "madman" alone. The "madman" sneaked out and made his way to Berlin, where he presented himself as Arnold Nimzovich. He used the name Arnold possibly as a precaution against anti-Semitism, though he soon reverted to his real first name. After some years of wandering, he finally settled in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I happened to be the tournament director, and the committee came to me desperately seeking help. I grabbed Nimzovich gently by the neck and gave him a boot in the behind as I propelled him toward the door. Fortunately, he saw the humor in the situation and left at once, laughing all the way.

Among grandmasters, Nimzovich's best friend--and his greatest admirer--was Dr. Milan Vidmar. Over the board, however, these two were fierce enemies, always producing games full of fireworks. I played four tournament games with Nimzovich, losing three and drawing one. He was too strong for me, as he was for so many others. In speed chess, though, one of our encounters did not turn out so happily for him. At a rapid-chess tournament in Breslau in 1925, part of the first prize was enough silk to make six shirts. Nimzovich, taking it for granted that he would win, found out everything he could about the silk even before the tournament began. As it happened, however, I defeated him in the first round--in a French Defense, in fact, in which he had played his specialty 3 e5. I went on to win the tournament and the silk.

On another occasion, in Berlin, having missed the first prize by losing to Saemisch, Nimzovich got up on a table and shouted, "Why must I lose to this idiot?" This story was told to me by the idiot himself.

Nimzovich also lost his temper at the end of the Marienbad tournament in 1925, which he would have won had he defeated Spielmann in the last round. But that game ended in a draw, and Nimzovich had to share first and second prizes with Rubinstein. He was so disappointed that he openly accused Spielmann of dishonor.

In Kissingen, where some of the match games were played, I was a guest in the same hotel at which I had stayed during the tournament in 1928. Overcrowded then, it was empty in 1934. At dinnertime, when the restaurant should have been crowded, there were only four people in the room: my wife and I, and, at another table, Frank and an elderly man who I later learned was the composer Richard Strauss. The sinister emptiness of that dining room, which the hotel manager attributed to "bad economic conditions," should have been a forewarning, but the Nazi leaders understood nothing. Frank himself failed to understand what was going on under his governorship in Poland. He became known as "the butcher of Poland," and for his war crimes he was hanged in Nuremberg.

Nimzovich caused several incidents during that 1934 match, all of them harmless except one. And for a moment, that one was hair-raisingly serious. One day when a high officer in a Nazi uniform entered the press room, Nimzovich brusquely demanded to see his credentials. When the perplexed officer didn't answer at once, Nimzovich asked him to leave. The other reporters, including myself, were horrified, expecting the Nazi to react violently after receiving such an order from a Jew. But, amazingly, nothing happened. The officer simply left.

All I can find is this fictional and disrespectful version