Friday, May 15, 2015

Chess on the "Zeppelin", Palestine, 1929

Reuven Rubin, The Zeppelin in Tel Aviv, Purim 1929. Source: Ilan Schori, 'When the Zeppelin Arrived in Tel Aviv' [in Hebrew]
Our frequent corespondent Moshe Roytman notifies us that, when the Zeppelin flew to Palestine in 1929 (it did it again in 1931), one of the passengers, von Weisl, there as the special correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse, organized an "international chess club" on the flight -- and the "first chess tournament in the air", as the source (above, in Hebrew) notes, quoting from his article to the newspaper (published on the first page, March 26th, 1929) . Of particular interest is that one of the members was an Egyptian, Al-Fath [ph. spelling]. Two games are mentioned: Bate having defeated Kaye [ph. spelling in both cases], and playing with Al-Fath. Von Weisel adds that Mrs. Tony Zander [ph. spelling] demanded to be a "kibitzer" in the four-board "club", but was denied because she doesn't know to play chess.

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