Lasker in Church (?)

 

Source: Hearst's Sunday American, Atlanta (GA), 13 September 1914, p. 37

Herbert Halsegger adds to us another "once" stories about chess players - and others - is an article titled "Longwindedness" in the humor section of the newspaper. The story about "Herr Lasker" is extremely unlikely, considering that he was Jewish, and therefore not likely to attend church sermons. Besides, the story has similar "witty sayings" by other notables from other fields, all unsourced... 

Oren and Blass, 1926 Polish Championship

 

Source: (Neue) Wiener Schachzeitung, vol. 4 no. 11 (June 1926), p. 169

Both Blass and Oren (then Chwojnik) played in the 1926 Polish championship. Herbert Halsagger provides us with the crosstable and the complete report of the tournament here. Blass scored 4.5 points and Oren 3.5, but his sole victory was against Blass. 

"Both New Masters, Eliskases and Glass"

 
Source: (Neue) Wiener Schachzeitung, vol. 7 no. 19 (October 1929), p. 289

We have often noted in this blog that Glass, the one-time Palestinian / Israeli master, had never in fact seen himself as anything else than Austrian, returning there after the 1935 Maccabiah and, later, after a few years in Israel in the 1950s. This is undestandable considering his greatest chess triumphs were there, in the 1920s. Here, Herbert Halsagger shows us, is a photo of the players of a tournament on top of a mountain, with "both new masters, Eliskases and Glass" in the middle. They both won the Austrian master title for coming in first and second, respectively, in the Innsbruck Congress of the Austrian Chess Federation. The entire article is here.

The "Polish Immortal"

 
Source:(Neue) Wiener Schachzeitung, vol. 32 no. 15/16 (Aug. 1935), p. 226

Who was the first to call the game between Glucksberg and Najdorf the "Polish Immortal"? Herbert Halsagger suggests that it was Tartakower,sd the annotator of the game as part of his article, "Chess in Poland," pp. 225-229 of the same issue. The entire volume can be found here. 

Alfred Emil Wolf

 

Source: See below

Herbert Halsegger sends us this very nice photo of Seigfried Reginald Wolf - who eventually emigrated to Haifa - playing chess with his son, Alfred Emil Wolf (1900-1923). 

Tragically, Alfred was killed in a mountaineering accident. He was a promising player in his own right, his obituary appearing in both the chess column of the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt (13 August 1923, p. 4) and on the first three and a half pages of the Neue Wiener Schach-Zeitung (vol. 1 no. 6, pp. 161-164), as Mr. Halsegger informs us. The photo is from p. 162 of the latter obituary.