The Most Famous

CHESS PLAYERS from Germany

This page contains a list of the greatest German Chess Players. The pantheon dataset contains 461 Chess Players, 16 of which were born in Germany. This makes Germany the birth place of the 7th most number of Chess Players behind United States, and Poland.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary German Chess Players of all time. This list of famous German Chess Players is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of German Chess Players.

1. Louis Paulsen (1833 - 1891)

With an HPI of 59.31, Louis Paulsen is the most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages on wikipedia.

Louis Paulsen (15 January 1833 in Gut Nassengrund near Blomberg, Principality of Lippe – 18 August 1891) was a German chess player. In the 1860s and 1870s, he was among the top players in the world. He was a younger brother of Wilfried Paulsen. Paulsen was one of the first players to challenge the notion that an attack could be constructed out of brilliance. He put forward the idea that any brilliant attack would have failed against correct defence. His ideas were grasped by Wilhelm Steinitz, who declared that attack and defence have equal status, and particularly by Aron Nimzowitsch, who listed Paulsen among his six greatest "purely defensive players". Paul Morphy and Paulsen were early masters of the game and of blindfold chess; they were capable of playing 10 blindfold games at the same time without any major errors. Paulsen played in the final match of the 1857 First American Chess Congress, losing to Paul Morphy five games to one with two draws. In 1862 Paulsen drew an eight-game match with Adolf Anderssen. Paulsen defeated Anderssen in matches in 1876 and 1877.

2. Friedrich Sämisch (1896 - 1975)

With an HPI of 58.05, Friedrich Sämisch is the 2nd most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Friedrich Sämisch (20 September 1896 – 16 August 1975) was a German chess player and chess theorist. He was among the inaugural recipients of the title International Grandmaster from FIDE in 1950.

3. Robert Hübner (1948 - 2025)

With an HPI of 58.01, Robert Hübner is the 3rd most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Robert Hübner (6 November 1948 – 5 January 2025) was a German chess grandmaster, chess writer, and papyrologist. He was one of the world's leading players in the 1970s and early 1980s.

4. Jean Dufresne (1829 - 1893)

With an HPI of 57.95, Jean Dufresne is the 4th most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Jean Dufresne (14 February 1829 – 13 April 1893) was a German chess player and chess composer. He was a student of Adolf Anderssen, to whom he lost the "Evergreen game" in 1852.

5. Jacques Mieses (1865 - 1954)

With an HPI of 57.37, Jacques Mieses is the 5th most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

Jacques Mieses (born Jacob Mieses; 27 February 1865 – 23 February 1954) was a German-born British chess player. He was one of the inaugural recipients of the title International Grandmaster from FIDE in 1950. He became a naturalized British citizen after World War II.p258

6. Wolfgang Uhlmann (1935 - 2020)

With an HPI of 56.13, Wolfgang Uhlmann is the 6th most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Wolfgang Uhlmann (29 March 1935 – 24 August 2020) was a German chess grandmaster. He was East Germany's most successful chess player between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s, reaching the 1971 Candidates Tournament. During his career, Uhlmann played many of the top players of the time and won the East Germany Chess Championships 11 times. Uhlmann continued to play chess into his later years, before dying at the age of 85 in Dresden.

7. Sonja Graf (1908 - 1965)

With an HPI of 55.72, Sonja Graf is the 7th most famous German Chess Player. Her biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Susanna "Sonja" Graf (December 16, 1908 – March 6, 1965) was a German and American chess player. She was a women's world championship runner-up and a two-time U.S. women's champion. In 2016, she was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame.

8. Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa (1818 - 1899)

With an HPI of 55.25, Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa is the 8th most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Tassilo, Baron von Heydebrand und der Lasa (known in English as Baron von der Lasa; 17 October 1818 – 27 July 1899) was a German chess master, chess historian and theoretician of the nineteenth century, a member of the Berlin Chess Club and a founder of the Berlin Chess School (the Berlin Pleiades).

9. Wolfgang Unzicker (1925 - 2006)

With an HPI of 55.18, Wolfgang Unzicker is the 9th most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Wolfgang Unzicker (26 June 1925 – 20 April 2006) was one of the strongest German chess Grandmasters from 1945 to about 1970. He decided against making chess his profession, choosing law instead. Unzicker was at times the world's strongest amateur chess player, and World Champion Anatoly Karpov called him the "world champion of amateurs".

10. Bernhard Horwitz (1807 - 1885)

With an HPI of 54.39, Bernhard Horwitz is the 10th most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Bernhard Horwitz (1807 in Neustrelitz – 1885 in London) was a German and British chess master, chess writer and chess composer. Horwitz was born in Neustrelitz and went to school in Berlin, where he studied art. From 1837 to 1843, he was part of a group of German chess players known as "The Pleiades". He moved to London in 1845, where he became a British citizen. In 1846, he lost a match against visiting master Lionel Kieseritzky, and another against Howard Staunton, losing 15.5–8.5. His best chess result was winning a match against Henry Bird in 1851. He played in the first international chess tournament, London 1851, again beating Bird in the first round, but losing to Staunton in the second and József Szén in the third. Horwitz's Chess Studies (1851), co-authored with Josef Kling, is an important work on the endgame study and endgames in general. "Horwitz bishops", a configuration in which two bishops are aggressively placed on adjacent diagonals, are named after Horwitz. The Kling and Horwitz Defensive Technique enables Black to force a draw with Black to move against perfect play in the diagram shown to the right. For a detailed analysis of this position, see here.Horwitz died in 1885 and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.

People

Pantheon has 16 people classified as German chess players born between 1766 and 1985. Of these 16, 3 (18.75%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living German chess players include Boris Gulko, Natalia Zhukova, and Elisabeth Pähtz. The most famous deceased German chess players include Louis Paulsen, Friedrich Sämisch, and Robert Hübner. As of April 2024, 1 new German chess players have been added to Pantheon including Aaron Alexandre.