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May-20-13
 | | paulalbert: On <HeMateMe> 's and <Buna> 's comment and question. Apparently the problem in communist East Germany was not so much the physical assets like the printing factory which may have been seized, but their opposition to the message of the Karl May novels,emphasis which effectively was on the free spirit of Native Americans, and Karl May himself was contoversial. Consequently, publishing the books became virtually impossible. It's difficult to seize intellectual property rights where the business value lay. How the Schmid family escaped from Dresden to Bamberg I do not know. Possibly the authorities did not care. Although the Karl May works did become public domain, Karl May Verlag has the rights to the Karl May name, and works on a number of promotional activities with others including the Karl May Foundation. The Karl May museums I think are more a Foundation activity. |
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May-20-13
 | | Diademas: RIP Lothar Schmid.
Is his birthdate correct?
The chessbase article gives his year of birth as 1928. The same does Wikipedia. |
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May-20-13
 | | HeMateMe: World's most famous TD! Perhaps his family left East Germany before the Wall was put up, in the early 60s, when there was still free travel between east and west? |
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May-21-13
| | HeMateMe: Here is a link to the NY Times obit for Herr Schmid: <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/s...> Schmid was also arbiter for the '92 rematch between Fischer and Spassky. |
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| May-21-13 | | thomastonk: <HeMateMe: Perhaps his family left East Germany before the Wall was put up, in the early 60s, when there was still free travel between east and west?> He left the Soviet occupation zone already in 1947 and settled in Bamberg. The two Germanys were founded in 1949, and the Wall was put up 1961. (Thank you for the link to the NY Times.) |
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| May-21-13 | | haydn20: It's men like this who give meaning to the phrase "a real *mensch*. |
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May-21-13
| | paulalbert: An interesting question with respect to Lothar's death is what is going to happen to his fabulous chess book collection? There is an inheritance and estate tax in Germany. Although the tax rates only go up to 30% for very large estates, the exemption for surviving spouses is only 500,000 Euros. Both Karl May Verlag and the chess book collection presumably are of considerable value, but presumably some ownership has already been transferred to Lothar's wife and three children. Putting a value for estate tax purposes on the chess book collection clearly would be very challenging. In the U.S., this kind of issue is frequently dealt with by donating the collection to a non profit organization, e.g., library, museum, university. The worst thing is heirs being forced to sell it off to pay taxes after a long dispute with tax authorities over valuation. I touched on this subject during my breakfast with Lothar many years ago. As I remember it, he said he was aware of the issue and planning for it, not surprising since Lothar had a law degree. At that time the collection had not been catalogued and that process was beginning. I would hope the collection could be preserved as a whole, not divided up among numerous collectors. |
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May-25-13
 | | PhilFeeley: Game collection missing this one:
[Event ""]
[Site "BRD"]
[Date "1967"]
[Round ""]
[White "Schmid Lothar (GER)"]
[Black "Darga Klaus (GER)"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteELO ""]
[BlackELO ""]
[Eco "C78"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O b5 6. Bb3 Be7 7. d4 d6 8. c3
O-O 9. h3 h6 10. Be3 Re8 11. Nbd2 Bf8 12. d5 Ne7 13. a4 Bb7 14. c4 c6 15.
dxc6 Nxc6 16. axb5 axb5 17. cxb5 Nb4 18. Qe2 Nxe4 19. Bxh6 d5 20. Be3 Nc5 21.
Bxc5 Bxc5 22. Rxa8 Bxa8 23. Rc1 Bd6 24. h4 g6 25. Ng5 Kg7 26. Nde4 Be7 27.
Qe3 Rh8 28. Nc5 Qd6 29. f4 Bf6 30. Nce6+ fxe6 31. Rc7+ Qxc7 32. Nxe6+ Kh7 33.
Nxc7 d4 34. Qd2 Be7 35. fxe5 1-0
Several of his games featured on Kevin Spraggett's page over the past few days. I don't know how many others may be missing here. |
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May-25-13
 | | brankat: R.I.P. Mr.Schmid. |
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| May-30-13 | | Cemoblanca: RIP Herr Schmid. |
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| Jun-29-13 | | RAlehin: Farewell, Mr Schmidt! Say hello to Bobby from all of us! |
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Jul-02-13
 | | Domdaniel: <paulalbert> Thanks for the info re Lothar Schmid's plans for his legendary library. We can only hope that this collection will be preserved and made available to readers. |
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| May-21-14 | | zanzibar: With all due respect, <He owned the finest private chess library in the World >, is a little extreme as an absolute statement of fact. Trying to be equally fair-minded as the subject, I think <one of the finest> would make an agreeable substitute. Agreed? |
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May-22-14
 | | perfidious: <zanzibar> May I suggest the following? <what was considered one of the finest> |
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| May-22-14 | | zanzibar: <perfidious> That's works nicely. Although I don't mind a spot of hyperbole in the kibitzing, I tend modesty (and accuracy) in the "official" section. I'm bouncing around doing the name stuff at the moment and bounced over here. I finally looked at the wiki source ('cause if you do claim a 'the' <best> extremum, it should be sourced after all), and here is what it said: <It was reputed that he owned the largest known private chess library in the world,[3]> A clever way to state the claim. Their source? Oxford Companion. |
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May-22-14
| | perfidious: <zanzibar> Agreed: whatever happens in the kibitzing, objectivity should be striven for in the bios. |
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| May-28-14 | | zanzibar: <perfidious> What happens in the kibitz stays in the kibitz (or should that be kibbutz?) Anyways, I looked into this a little more, and discovered that Oxford Companion (1e) did make an absolute statement in regards to L. Schmid's library: <A collector of chess paraphernalia and books, he has the largest private chess library in the world> Last sentence in his entry, from the 1984 (1e p297-298 hbk) Hooper and Whyld book. Now it's hard to argue with such distinguished, and usually careful, authors - but it still strikes me as a rather bold statement of fact. I wonder if it remained in the 2e? |
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May-28-14
| | paulalbert: That Lothar had the largest private collection was a claim he personally made. He made it to me when I had breakfast with him in NY about 8 years ago. As I remember the conversation, he also said it was bigger than some of the well known collections in public libraries, Cleveland , OH, e.g. Note that this relates to number of items; Lothar's collection was very comprehensive, highly valuable along with less valuable, and apparently included more than one of many items. The mixture of the rare with the mundane from what I have read is an issue in disposing of the collection as a whole rather than piecemeal. I have no idea where the Schmid family's sale efforts stand at this point. |
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May-28-14
 | | tamar: Dirk Jan Ten Geuzendam wrote a diplomatic piece in New in Chess about his visit to the library after Schmid's death. The gist, without the diplomacy, was that a large percentage of the collection was junk, and that the truly valuable parts, which he did not deny, could be confined to one room. A bigger objection to sale was that Schmid had always resisted making an inventory catalog, and the family afterwards could not/ or would not provide one to a seller either. |
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| May-28-14 | | zanzibar: Here I find another parallel between the world of chess and jazz. I once knew a man with an extensive, and fine, collection of LP's - including many original pressings. This was an individual who had actually heard Charlie Parker perform live. He well knew jazz, and could write well about it as well. But his days were drawing down, and he wondered what he should do with his collection. Since he had no close relatives who knew the value of such records, I advised him to liquidate all but his most favorite recordings. That way, he would benefit his beloved wife the most; both by relieving her of a job she was unqualified for, and by maximizing the financial return on his collection. He didn't know the business end at first, but he had both the brains and the music knowledge to learn very quickly. It turns out that he really didn't need my advice, since he had basically already decided the same. But he was surprised to realize that selling his collection piecemeal to different dealers offered the better return than selling it as a complete package to one dealer. That, despite the fact that the majority of his collection was essentially non-convertible, and ended up being donated to a local library. (His original pressings of Blue Note records were the most valuable) His wife would never have the patience to do all the work necessary to sort out the collection, and would have squandered the most valuable by selling the entire lot as a unit. Even if properly inventoried. Of course it was sad for him to sell off such a fine collection. But he did have fun making the many trips to the various record dealers throughout the city. Of course, that was in the days that cities still had record shops. |
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| Mar-31-15 | | Brown: Request for a photo just of Schmid for his page. |
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Mar-31-15
 | | offramp: <Brown: Request for a photo just of Schmid for his page.> Take an A4 piece of paper and cut a 2cm x 2cm hole in the centre of it. Hold that piece of paper up to your computer screen so that Schmid's face appears in the hole. Sorted! |
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Aug-07-15
 | | MissScarlett: <Dirk Jan Ten Geuzendam wrote a diplomatic piece in New in Chess about his visit to the library after Schmid's death.> <In November 2014, DeLucia visited Schmid’s house. This visit has led to the publication of Seven Days in Bamberg – The Best of the Lothar Schmid Collection. For almost anybody, this brandnew luxury book will be a first opportunity to see the highlights of Schmid’s collection, as the German was always quite secretive and never published a catalogue or any other publication on his library.> |
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| May-16-18 | | Senk: https://de.chessbase.com/post/lotha... |
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| Oct-16-19 | | Brown: Lets get Fischer off of Schmid's page. |
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