Being a chess historian is a wonderful profession, an interesting non-religious spiritual experience. But of course there are sorrows, darknesses one has to wade through.
What do I mean by spiritual experience? It is not a religious kind of experience, but since one is always confronted with the past, as well as the present - yes, this is also the duty of a historian, much like a chronist - one gains an incredible awareness of the omnipresence of death, a huge respect (for lack of a better word) for the people of the past and present, as well as thankfulness, humility for the fact that it was never easier - but still by no means easy - to be a historian, and for the gifts of the modern era.
Klaus Junge fell in the second world war, a fate shared thirty years ago by some aspiring composers in the previous world war, a fate shared at Junge's time by the opponents of despotism both in the "
whole burn" and "
great purge".
The preciousness of life, the lability of peace can only - even or maybe especially while there are still great terrors in the world - lead only to thankfulness at one's ability to live in relative peace, in an apartment with water supply and electricity, something that very few people have, a very small percentage of humanity.
But there are also other joys, surges of a rising dopamin level, that are to be achieved: When a rare information is found, a lucky event happens that leads to a new bit of knowledge, when the pieces of the past are uncovered like archaeological sites are unburied by science, the small moment of joy makes all the invested work worth the while.
The sorrows are obvious: First of all nobody cares about the past enough to pay for results. All the research is financed on one's own, and if it weren't for helpful people who agree to either upload or send historical documents and magazines the financial investment would not justify the results. The internet made research easier, as said above. I fondly remember a school project that uncovered secrets about
Friedrich Amelung and the Katharina glass manufacturing, unfortunately now their website is offline.
The major sorrow is the one that most likely everyone has to go through: Death. The death of contemporary people is not only often a hit against the work as a historian, but often enough a hit against one's own heart - or in some cases rather getting the heart ripped out, squeezed together, and then put in again in the most painful ways. It can be a life-changing event in rare cases, especially when a good friend dies.
I got very depressive when this happened the last time, but I decided against suicide solely on the reason that by that point I was convinced of two things:
Something would not allow me to die even if I chose to
We will meet again when my time has come to enter Heaven
I am a Christian, and I always was it. There were times in my life when I doubted everything, when I turned away from Christianity. There were times when I saw no future, when I gave up. There were times when I blamed God for the bad things in my life, asking how He could allow that.
I received all answers I was searching for five years ago. I learnt a lot about myself, about God, about the purpose and the destination of humans. It is however not of any use to share this knowledge, since it would need nothing less than a personal experience to believe in it.
I wondered for a long time if I should publish my experiences, but I decide against it for several reasons. The one above is the most convincing, and also the one why an anonymous publication would also be useless.
But maybe there is one thing that should be published: The bad things that happen are at the will of Satan. Without Satan, there would not be this evil.
My personal spiritual battles however shall only be interesting for this article as a background, an explanation of my mindset, but also to show that even with everything I experienced there is not much protection from the hard blows of life, and to make clear that neither spiritual awareness, religion nor knowledge can overcome emotions, and yet they can make the difference in how we handle our emoitions.
There are typical days, where I will check the news - especially
Wikipedia and
MatPlus - for important news. An important part is to check sources, being aware that Wikipedia, as wonderful as it is without a doubt, only is a tertiary source, one whose own sources should be examined. Secondary sources are those that can be used.
If something especially important has happened - such as an uncommon event or unfortunately more often a death - I will call a friend who is a journalist and chess historian. He will see what he can use for preservation and what for columns. I might also send a note to several people, including weblinks and important information. A distanced view of course is impossible more often than not. In the cases of a personal tragedy I will talk to my friend or lay on the bed and try to get rest. At some points that rest is important for my own survival, something I experienced only once, at the death of a close friend and mentor. To emphasise this, the death of my grandfather had me saddened for days, but the death of my friend and mentor still saddens me. The critical phase lasted for a week that I think I mostly spent in bed. I have not much recollection of those days, I only remember going to the internet every now and then. I don't remember if I tried to distract myself, but it was very important to be undisturbed for my own health. At that point I had strong depressions that I overcame, as told above.
There is no such thing as getting used to lose friends. Every time it hurts, and with a close friend it hurts a lot.
Another topic of being a historian is to visit historical sites, if possible. It is one of my wishes to visit one of the venues where
Bobby Fischer player Boris Spassky in 1992.
I visited several historical sites when I was in England in 2012, including the
Park Lane Hotel - there is nothing to say against the staff there, they are among the most helpful people I ever met, and their incredible honest work that extends far beyond their occupation showed when the manager himself showed a young man who could not be further away from the high society that meets there through dark, almost secret, rooms to the historical plaque of that match, the proof that
Kasparov and Karpov played at that venue.
In modern terms, this was a crowning moment of awesome, an unforgettable event, a great honor and no less a sign that the memory to an incredible event two and a half decades ago still is fresh in the mind of these people, and their own awe at having witnessed this event still influenced them in a way to show the greatest hospitality to a "casual" stranger.
No less hospitality was shown a few days later in a small place in
Bletchley, the town that was place of the biggest secret government operation of World War II. The young to middle-aged owner and his wife treated us with all the respect and hospitality we had missed in the horrible place in London that we had chosen as a "hotel". I make no joke by saying that a German prisoner nowadays has more space than someone at that "hotel" across the road from the London train station. In Bletchley we had a wonderful bed, a separate room as a wardrobe, TV and DVD on the room, a water cooker together with chocolate drinks, coffee, tea - all without having to pay extra. In the end, we even left a book there - yes, there were books that one could take to his room from a stand outside.
But it would be wrong to believe that the owner stopped there: He offered more or less a free taxi service for us, sat outside at the evening for interesting talks, and showed us places around the town.
The reason why I went there was another one, deeply rooted in the history of the world. There is a famous t-shirt supposedly by the Israeli secret service, stating "My job is so secret, I don't even know what I'm doing." What is intended as a joke, was reality in Bletchley.
During World War II a secret government operation was held of that only very few people knew. There were over 8000 people working in
Bletchley Park, doing jobs that seemed like boring office jobs. In reality, they saved the world.
All of the bits of information were processed together for a greater purpose. The war in Europe raged on since 1 September 1939, almost exactly 75 years ago. Adolf Hitler, the German dictator from Austria, wanted to murder. Studying him brought me the one revelation: All of the talk of Hitler was a lie, one that was only meant to let him murder people. The "German master race" was the one that Hitler wanted to kill when he lost the war, they should have gone down with him as his last will. To me there is no doubt that Hitler only used excuses to murder as many people as he could, without really caring about what he promoted. Maybe at some point he believed in it, but in the end he didn't anymore. He only wanted to see Germany go down with him.
But how could Hitler be defeated? Well, there were several issues with the communication, the biggest one was that communication had to be held in a way that could be spied upon. Germany had constructed the
ENIGMA, an encryption code with a fundamental flaw. It was this one flaw that lost the war for the nazis.
In September 1939, the
Chess Olympiad was held. Germany's biggest triumph of winning the olympiad, and England's biggest loss at having to leave it early would reverse in war. The English team was ordered to work in Bletchley Park, maybe forty minutes away from London by train. A small village in the heart of England, an absolutely irrelevant place would turn into the most important place of the history of the 20th century Europe.
The secrecy was high, and plans were manifold - a young
Ian Fleming worked there and developed a plan consisting of
having a plane crash into the ocean to overtake a German war ship and decrypting ENIGMA this way, but it was discarded. Later, of course, he would create a series of books based on his work in Bletchley Park, his main protagonist named after an ornithologist he exchanged letters with, the Carribean birds expert and author of
Birds of the West Indies,
James Bond.
Back in 1939 however, some of the major chessplayers joined the operation, namely
C. H. O'D. Alexander,
Philip Stuart Milner-Barry and
Harry Golombek. Alexander worked in the now legendary Hut Six at some point.
Crossword solving was used to determine candidates for the work in Bletchley Park, and amidst a war that raged between men
but also between birds (!), the great secret, the riddle (such is the literal translation of "Enigma") had to be solved as well. It took the efforts of thousands of people who knew nothing about the importance of their work, to not endanger the operation, to finally figure out a minor but decisive flaw in ENIGMA: The machine coded letters onto other letters but it was unable to code a letter onto itself. Without that flaw, history would have taken another turn.
The Bombe was built, a great machine that would check all possible combinations of encryptions to find useful results for decyphering the code. It was an early computer, much unlike modern computers. In the modern sense of the word it might not even be a computer, but it worked like one - it got input and gave output, saving people a lot of time, although manual reviews were of course necessary.
Breaking the ENIGMA code was enough to read German messages for the day, then the code had to be broken again. The Bombe provided results, finally leading to the invasion of U.S. forces at the Normandy. Hitler lost the war by the ingenuity of no less than a whole country's most intelligent people, an impossible project that had to be made possible.
The visit to the historical heritage site was another crowning moment of awesome. Of course, the more interesting people like
Turing and Fleming got most coverage, but also Alexander got some. Asking the staff about certain people led them to show important places or point to them. It was a great moment to stand in the very room where the world was saved from Hitler, where history was created.
It is a shame that this venue is not a top priority of the British government to be saved.
It is a piece of history that is of utmost importance, and the story behind it of the greatest interest.
With this experience, I think, I have shown the downsides and upsides of being a chess historian. It is an intimate insight, but no less an important one.
