Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Mon Jun 25, 2012 2:13 pm

Was alerted to the upcoming Johannes Zukertort grave rededication (tomorrow, Tuesday), and found details on the ECF website provided by GM Stuart Conquest:

http://www.englishchess.org.uk/?p=19931

Brompton Cemetery, 13:00. "West Brompton tube (and overground) is right next to the cemetery. If you walk down the long, central avenue, the Zukertort grave is on the extreme right-hand path, about 3/4 of the way down."

Posting details here as well as it may be of interest to some.

John Townsend
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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by John Townsend » Mon Jun 25, 2012 3:44 pm

Christopher, wasn't it you who suggested that Zukertort had been cremated!! Are you satisfied now that he was buried?

John McKenna

Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by John McKenna » Mon Jun 25, 2012 4:41 pm

Zuckertort, in his two matches against Steinitz "crashed and burned" (in the parlance of one Joey Stewart elsewhere on the forum). Despite getting off to a flying 4-1 start (after Wilhelm won 1st game) in the second match, which was the inaugural World Ch. The match ran for 10 weeks - from Jan. to Mar. - and was split between New Orleans and St. Louis, I believe.

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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Mon Jun 25, 2012 5:07 pm

John Townsend wrote:Christopher, wasn't it you who suggested that Zukertort had been cremated!! Are you satisfied now that he was buried?
What I pointed out in a letter to CHESS (November 2011) was that this column by Winter quotes from the October 1927 BCM and refers to "ashes":

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/graves.html

Thinking on it some more, what someone (Keeble) says in 1927 about a death that took place in 1888 may be no more reliable than what people are saying now in 2012. Whether it was cremation or burial, I suppose you'd have to locate original records. I did write to Stuart Conquest at the time, and he said that the cemetery supervisor was "almost certain" that Zukertort was buried in the normal fashion.

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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by John Townsend » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:12 pm

Christopher, the John Keeble quote which you referred to specifically says that Zukertort "was buried in Brompton Cemetery". The mention of "ashes" doesn't mean that he was cremated!

Couldn't you have checked the burial register before writing your letter to CHESS?
Last edited by John Townsend on Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:58 pm

The letter to CHESS wasn't intended to be anything final. I was kind of hoping that others would write in and correct anything that was wrong or incorrect about that. At least I did provide the Keeble quote (including the "was buried in Brompton Cemetery" bit), so people can draw their own conclusions. To clear up one point, though, is the reference to "ashes" in the biblical sense ('ashes to ashes, dust to dust')? i.e. When saying "His ashes remain in our keeping", that is a poetic way of referring to his remains, but not meaning cremation? You are probably right to say I should have checked the burial register first, but hopefully anyone researching this will do that and not rely on letters to CHESS...

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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Tue Jun 26, 2012 8:27 pm

Some links about this event (which I was able to attend) are now popping up on various places around the internet. It was a nicely done ceremony, and the weather was gorgeous.

John Saunder's blog includes a video clip:

http://johnchess.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06 ... torts.html

Some pictures of what the grave looked like earlier are here:

http://www.kwabc.org/Homepage-UK/graves_1.htm#zuk
http://www.kwabc.org/Bilder/Galleries/Z ... index.html

If anyone spots other coverage of this, could they post links here?

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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by MSoszynski » Tue Jun 26, 2012 9:43 pm

My review for ChessCafe of a Polish book on Zukertort, in which I summarise Zukertort's biographical details, is available here:

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review340.pdf

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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Wed Jun 27, 2012 10:40 am

A few news articles:

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/johan ... -in-london

More coverage in the Polish press (the first link is English, the other two are in Polish and are the same as each other, but not sure if the English one is a translation of this one, so they might all just be one article):

http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/1040 ... -in-London

http://www.wprost.pl/ar/330490/Wielka-B ... taurowany/
http://wyborcza.pl/1,91446,12018915,W_B ... kiego.html


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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by JamesGallagher » Thu Feb 16, 2017 9:20 pm

The 1886 Liverpool Chess club Report records that Polish Grandmaster Johannes Hermann Zukertort visited the club 2 days before he left for America to play Wilhelm Steinitz for the World Championship. The first day he played a blindfold simultaneous against 5 Liverpool players, and the next day against 10 players with a large audience present. Nice warm up!

Full 1886 Report can be viewed here:
https://www.facebook.com/LiverpoolChess ... 7264111352
James Gallagher
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07789 924983
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Nick Grey
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Re: Johannes Zukertort grave rededication

Post by Nick Grey » Fri Feb 24, 2017 7:29 pm

As Kensington & Chelsea had to close all parks and cemeteries for the storm I am going to make a visit next time I'm in the area to see what has fallen down.

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