At the beginning of April 1923 a man who gave his name as <Dr. Max Blumenfeld> appeared among the chess community of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil claiming to have arrived from Belgium on the ship 'Lutetia' on his way to River Plate. Describing himself as a professional chessplayer who had victories in tournaments in Warsaw and Vienna, as well as a 6-0 defeat of Belgian champion Edgard Colle, to his credit, he offered to give a simultaneous display during his short stay. The Rio newspaper <O Imparcial> gave some further details about Blumenfeld's European results. Its 1923.04.04 issue (p10) described Blumenfeld as the <'winner of the national tournaments held in Warsaw, Poland, in 1920 and 1921'>. A later account (1923.04.08, p11) described him as <'the notable Polish professional whose name is among the best chessplayers in Europe, where, in several countries and in master tournaments, he has always achieved excellent results. One of the last tournaments in which he took part, playing against respectable opponents, was the Vienna tournament, where he obtained fourth place, defeating, among others, the emeritus professional Dr. Tartakower'>. The same report gave the additional information that Dr. Blumenfeld was a physician who was en route to open a medical practice in Buenos Aires.

Despite being unable to provide any proof of his accomplishments, Blumenfeld was able to convince local chess officials that he possessed "the necessary technique". A simul was arranged at Rio's Guanabara Chess Club on April 5th in which the Doctor scored +11-8=1. During his time in Rio, Blumenfeld also played three exhibition games against the city champion Dr. Heitor Alberto Carlos, Octavio Trompowsky, and the champion of the Guanabara Chess Club Luiz Vianna, winning against the first two and drawing against the last. The newspaper <A Noite> (1923.04.09, p6) reported that Blumenfeld had accepted an invitation to play some exhibitions in Petrópolis, but there were no further reports about this.

Writing in his chess column in the magazine <Brazilian American> (Rio de Janeiro), Aubrey N. Stuart gave these particulars about Blumenfeld:

<...He claims to have invented a gambit named after himself in the Queen's Pawn Opening, but has not yet had time to show it to us: we confess we have never heard of a Blumenfeld Gambit. He also showed us a couple of end games of his composition, which he has authorized us to publish as original contributions to our column. // In appearance, Blumenfeld could easily be taken for a South American. He has a ready smile and a soft voice, and his equanimity is only disturbed by meeting people who want him to play Chess with them for nothing. He speaks German, French and, after a fashion, English.> (quoted in American Chess Bulletin, May-June, 1923, v20, n5, p112: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxr...)

Stuart's write-up and one of Blumenfeld's compositions were reprinted in <American Chess Bulletin>. In its following issue, the <Bulletin> published a letter it had received from Dawid Przepiorka of Warsaw:

Meanwhile, Dr. Max Blumenfeld had moved on to Uruguay, then to Argentina. The magazine <Mundo Uruguayo> (May 24, 1923, p13) published a photo of 'El profesor de ajedrez, austriaco, doctor Max Blumenfeld' ('Austrian chess professor Dr. Max Blumenfeld') playing a simul against twenty players at Montevideo's Club Español.

In early June 1923 at Buenos Aires, Blumenfeld again presented himself to the local chess community, describing himself as an <'international master of chess'>, a title he had acquired <'following a victory in a Polish national tournament approximately ten years ago'> (Crítica, 1923.06.05, p7). On June 4th, he played an exhibition game against Roberto Grau at the Circolo de Ajedrez which Grau won after resumption. The following day he played to a draw against the Argentinian Champion Benito Higinio Villegas at the Club Argentino de Ajedrez. On June 7th, Blumenfeld lost a game against Julio Lynch. A photo was published of Blumenfeld and Lynch at the board in the magazine <Caras y Caretas> (see bottom of page, Blumenfeld seated left): https://archive.org/details/Caras_y.... A friendly game was scheduled between Blumenfeld and Julio Arias but the result does not appear to have been reported (Crítica, 1923.06.08, p3). Blumenfeld also performed a simul at the Club Argentino de Ajedrez on June 11th, scoring +11-3=2 (Crítica, 1923.06.12, p3).

After these exploits, Dr. Max Blumenfeld almost entirely fades from notice.

Juan Morgado's <'Los Años Locos del Ajedrez Argentino Parte 2'> quotes a mention of Blumenfeld by Roberto Grau in the Buenos Aires newspaper <La Nación> from April 30, 1924. Morgado adds a note stating that Blumenfeld left the country soon afterward.

Sometime around early 1925 Dr. Max Blumenfeld reappeared in Rio de Janeiro. According to an item from the chess column of the <Brazilian American> (quoted in American Chess Bulletin, Mar., 1925, v22, n3, p60: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxr...), when the Doctor was confronted about passing off someone else's endgame composition as his own, he admitted his deception and promised to write an apology for publication. However, no apology was provided, the Doctor having left town again.

Who was the <Dr. Max Blumenfeld> who appeared in the South American chess community in 1923-5?

Checking for contemporary local records of Dr. Max Blumenfeld, there is a record on a ship passenger list of a 'Malksymilyan Blumenfeld', a 32-year-old Polish national, entering Uruguay from Brazil on May 11, 1923.

While it is very probable that a <Maximilian Blumenfeld> played chess around 1900 in Moscow (see here: Biographer Bistro (kibitz #29451)), there is no evidence that he was a doctor. In any case, he was obviously too old to be the chessplayer who toured South America in 1923.

Clearly, Benjamin Blumenfeld can be ruled out. But it should be noted that not only did Benjamin have a brother, Rudolf (https://spurenimvest.de/2021/06/23/...), who was both a doctor and a chessplayer, he also had another brother named Maximilian (born 1874) who was also a physician. However, it does not appear that Rudolf left Riga around 1923 and there is no evidence Maximilian played chess (he is said to have gone to China then possibly to the USA).

Dr. Max Blumenfeld's claims to have competed in tournaments in Vienna prompt one to look at the tournament results attributed to a "Dr. Blumenfeld" in Vienna during 1919-1920. The 1919/20 Leopold Trebitsch Tournament of the Vienna Chess Club resulted in a 4th place finish for a Dr. Blumenfeld, behind Dr. S. Tartakower, Ernst Gruenfeld (=1st-2nd) and O. Stroble (3rd). Around the same time, a Dr. Blumenfeld finished last in a 4-player double round-robin tournament in Vienna, losing all his games to Tartakower, Gruenfeld and Maroczy. (Some databases also have some casual games played by Ernst Gruenfeld against a player named Blumenfeld at the Café Central in Vienna during March, 1920. Most attribute them to Benjamin Blumenfeld). Two of Blumenfeld's games from these competitions were published in <Deutsche Schachzeitung> with annotations by Ernst Gruenfeld: a drawn game, Tartakower vs. <'Dr. Blumenfeld'>, from the 1919/20 Leopold Trebitsch Tournament (Aug. 1922, n8, pp179-180) and a win by Gruenfeld against <'Dr. M. Blumenfeld'> from a 1920 Vienna Quadrangular tournament (June 1920, n6, pp129-130). Several databases give the above-mentioned Gruenfeld-Dr. M. Blumenfeld game as having been played by Benjamin Blumenfeld.

Benjamin Blumenfeld was a resident of Moscow from 1906 and was active there as a chessplayer until at least 1915. He played at the Moscow Chess Olympiad in Oct. 1920 at which time he was listed as being a resident of Saratov. By July 1921 he was again living in Moscow. No biographical write-up on him that could be found mentions him living, or playing chess, in Vienna during 1919-20.

The book <Pioneros Judíos del Desierto: Neuquén y Río Negro, 1879-1939> (Buenos Aires, 2000) by Ricardo Koon, which chronicles the history of the Jewish community in Argentina's Neuquén and Río Negro provinces, mentions (p171) a <Dr. Maximiliano Blumenfeld>, a University of Vienna-trained physician who set up a practice in the town of Zapala around 1925.

A Hamburg ship manifest from 1930 lists a Dr. Max Blumenfeld, aged 39, and his 26-year-old wife Klara, departing for Venezuela. There are records from Venezuela in 1927 of a Dr. Maximiliano Blumenfeld trying to revalidate his medical degree from the University of Vienna: https://archive.org/details/memoria...

The book <'Médicos de Ascendencia Judía en Venezuela'> ['Doctors of Jewish Descent in Venezuela'] (Caracas: Editorial Ateproca, 2010) by Abraham Krivoy gives (pages 62-64) biographical information about Maximiliano Blumenfeld, his younger brother Jeronimo/Geronimo (Jaromir) and Jeronimo's wife Elena, all of whom were physicians. The text mentions that Maximiliano was a chessplayer (pp63-64, translated from Spanish):

<"Dr. Maximiliano Blumenfeld, also of Polish origin, a brother, older by 8 years, of Dr. Germán Gerónimo, lived in Venezuela for about six years, practicing medicine first in Altagracia de Orituco and then in Caracas. He returned to Poland between 1932 and 1933 and died in Warsaw in 1938. In addition to being an excellent chess player, he boasted that he had played with Capablanca.">

The book records that Jeronimo's wife Elena was born in Jaroslaw, Poland but it does not mention that her husband and brother-in-law were also born there. According to birth records in Jaroslaw, Max and Jaromir (Jeronimo) were born to Dr. Emil & Amalia (née Bernstein) Blumenfeld in 1891 and 1898 respectively. At that time Jaroslaw was in the province of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Max's father, Dr. Emil Blumenfeld (1854-1918), was a University of Vienna-educated lawyer and activist: https://www.google.com/books/editio....