Report about The Emanuel Lasker Conference
in Potsdam from January 12-14 2001

Johannes Fischer

Emanuel Lasker is one of the most interesting and fascinating personalities in the history of Chess. Not only was he World Champion for 27 years - longer than any other chessplayer before or after him - he was also a mathematician, philosopher, playwright, political thinker and commentator, the author of several books about chess and other games and the founder of a school of intellectual games.

Now, from 12-14 January 2001, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his death, a three-day conference took place in Potsdam, near Berlin. Apart from analyzing the various aspects of his enigmatic personality the main goal of the conference was to draw attention to and to reconstruct the role of Jewish intellectuals in Germany - a group among which Lasker was well-known and outspoken and which contributed so much to Germany's cultural and intellectual life before its brutal destruction by the Nazis.

The conference also centered around new findings recently published: Emanuel Lasker: Schach, Philosophie und Wissenschaft, (Eds. Michael Dreyer, Ulrich Sieg), Berlin: Philo Verlag, 2001. The collection of essays focuses on Lasker's cultural-historical background and highlights the various aspects of his thinking.

Accordingly, a number of interesting presentations scrutinized the diverse aspects of Lasker's intellectual heritage. While most former biographies of Lasker content themselves with rather nonchalant statements about the value and the significance of his non-chess activities this conference offered a more balanced view: As philosopher Lasker seems to deserve neither the praise sometimes uncritically lavished on him by his more chess-minded biographers nor the near total ignorance of contemporary philosophy and the history of this discipline.

As a mathematician Lasker held a Ph.D. and contributed to some groundbreaking theories of modern algebra. His dissertation actually turned out to be the starting point for some of the research conducted by the famous mathematician Emmy Noether one of the first women who fought her way into the conservative ranks of German academia.

His role as political commentator seems to be somewhat similar to his attempts as philosopher: self-educated and remarkably self-confident, acute in his observations but at times overly naive, the quality of his political comments and thoughts seems to be neither much better nor much worse than those of his fellow intellectuals such as Thomas Mann or other culturally minded people whose main discipline were not politics.

However, as a playwright he justly seems to be forgotten. His one attempt at drama Vom Menschen die Geschichte which was written together with his brother Berthold, former husband of the well known poet Else Lasker-Schüler, is overburdened with all-too-deep thoughts and appears to be rather clumsy. Accordingly, it never made its way to the stage and has remained obscure.

For chessplayers the greatest surprise of the conference might have been the questioning of the widespread and popular belief of Lasker as the founder of a psychological approach to Chess. In a number of lectures and in the ensuing discussion it was widely agreed that this image of Lasker needs to be corrected. Lasker's approach to chess appears to be deeply rooted in his philosophy of struggle (his first published philosophical essay actually appeared under just that title) and seems to have little, if anything, to do with psychology.

This points to a telling paradox: while the conference stressed the various aspects of Lasker's intellectual heritage it seems to be his approach to Chess in particular that is in need of reevaluation. Although a lot has been written about Lasker as chessplayer and person, a serious and critical analysis of his games and his approach to Chess still waits to see the light of day.

A number of presentations focused on Lasker's biography and dealt with topics such as his relationship to the Soviet Union and Holland, often in an anecdotal fashion.

The conference splendidly organized by Paul Werner Wagner and supported by the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung and the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum in Berlin took place in a nice and friendly atmosphere and drew a lot of public interest. It could also boast an impressive list of prominent guests from the world of Chess such as GM Viktor Kortschnoj, GM Robert Hübner, GM Wolfgang Unzicker, GM Helmut Pfleger, GM Lothar Schmid, GM Daniel King, GM Wolfgang Uhlmann, GM Andre Lilienthal and GM Juri Awerbach who were either interested spectators, gave presentations themselves, or shared their memories of Lasker and the role Lasker played in their life. Indicative for the timeliness of the conference was also the attendance of a number of prominent people from Germany's cultural and political life.

To continue the study of Lasker and the role he played in Jewish intellectual life in Germany before 1933 the Internationale Emanuel Lasker Gesellschaft (www.lasker-gesellschaft.de) was founded. Its objectives are to restore and to keep Lasker's heritage and its cultural and historic significance. Judging from this conference the work to come promises to be both exciting and rewarding.