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, 15 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 52.86, 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 51.43, 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 (b. 1948)

With an HPI of 51.38, Robert Hübner is the 3rd most famous German Chess Player. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Robert Hübner (born November 6, 1948) is 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 51.32, 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 50.66, 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 49.25, 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 48.79, 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 48.24, 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 48.17, 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". Unzicker was born in Pirmasens, a small town near Kaiserslautern in the province of Rhineland-Palatinate noted for shoemaking. His father taught him how to play chess at age 10. His brother, four years older, was also a chess player but was killed in World War II. Unzicker began to play tournaments abroad in 1948 as Germany was struggling to rebuild after the war, and achieved the grandmaster title in 1954. He won the German Championship six times from 1948 to 1963 and tied for first in 1965. From 1950 to 1978 Unzicker played in twelve Chess Olympiads, and was first board on ten of them. He played nearly 400 times representing Germany's national team. For many years he was legal advisor for the German Chess Association. His tournament victories include the first place tie (+6−0=9) with Boris Spassky at the Chigorin Memorial in Sochi 1965, first at Maribor 1967 ahead of Samuel Reshevsky, first at Krems, and first at Amsterdam 1980 tied with Hans Ree. In 1950, Unzicker shared the prize for best top-board score (+9−1=4) with Miguel Najdorf for his performance on first board for the West German team at the Dubrovnik Chess Olympiad. At the Tel Aviv 1964 Chess Olympiad Unzicker scored 13.5 points playing first board for the West German team that won the bronze medal on the strength of a 3:1 team victory over the Soviet Union. Unzicker also shared fourth place (+2−1=15) with Lajos Portisch in the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup in Santa Monica, California. Only Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, and Bent Larsen finished ahead of Unzicker. Unzicker placed ahead of world champion Tigran Petrosian, Samuel Reshevsky, Miguel Najdorf, Borislav Ivkov, and Hein Donner. At Hastings 1969–70, Unzicker finished second (+4−0=5) after Lajos Portisch and ahead of Svetozar Gligorić and former world champion Vasily Smyslov. Unzicker finished second (+3−2=7) to Viktor Korchnoi at South Africa 1979. A retired judge, he was still playing chess as first board on the club team "Tarrasch Munich". Unzicker had a classical chess style modelled after the German player and theorist Siegbert Tarrasch. In 1956 he lost a match to Paul Keres in which both players chose to begin with the Ruy Lopez opening in all eight games. In 2005, Unzicker celebrated his 80th birthday with his wife Freia, his three sons and their wives and three grandchildren, and a tournament with Karpov, Korchnoi and Spassky took place in his honor. Wolfgang Unzicker died on April 20, 2006, at the age of 80, during a holiday trip to Albufeira, Portugal. Notable Games Unzicker-Fisher Buenos Aires, 1960 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Be7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.O-O-O O-O 10.Bd3 Nc6 11.Nxc6 bxc6 12.Qg3 h5 13.e5 dxe5 14.fxe5 Ng4 15.Bxe7 Qxe7 16.Ne4 Qc7 17.h3 Nxe5 18.Nf6+ Kh8 19.Qg5 Nxd3+ 20.Rxd3 gxf6 21.Qxh5+ Kg7 22.Qg4+ 1-0

10. Bernhard Horwitz (1807 - 1885)

With an HPI of 47.27, 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, 4 (25.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living German chess players include Robert Hübner, Boris Gulko, and Natalia Zhukova. The most famous deceased German chess players include Louis Paulsen, Friedrich Sämisch, and Jean Dufresne. As of April 2024, 1 new German chess players have been added to Pantheon including Aaron Alexandre.