Hans-Joachim Hecht, a Grandmaster since 1973, was a member of the successful German national team in the 1960s and 1970s, became German team champion eight times with his clubs SG Solingen and Bayern Munich and won the European Cup once. Today he celebrates his 85th birthday. Congratulations to him! | Photos: German Chess Federation, Münchener Schachakademie
Today, legendary Grandmaster Vlastimil Hort celebrates his 80th birthday. A long stay of several weeks in the hospital when he was five years old and a caring doctor who played correspondence chess and explained the chess rules to him gave way to his great passion. Eduard Frey celebrates the legend’s anniversary!
He is an internist, a gastroenterologist at a Berlin hospital. He is also an avid chess player. And a photographer, who founded the Valokulta art group. Dr Jan Wähner has sent us some extraordinary pictures from the 2024 calendar, for which his good friend GM Dr Helmut Pfleger has written the foreword.
On August 6th, to celebrate GM Helmut Pfleger's eightieth birthday, octogenarian puzzle master Werner Keym submitted two very clever little problems in two German newspapers. The puzzles, which had a unique form of birthday greetings encoded into them, were not at all easy to work out. Today we bring you the solutions.
He is one of our earliest friends in chess, a personality that has done more for German chess than anyone we know. He started as the country's most talented young player, became a grandmaster, a medical doctor, but continued to promote the game in numerous chess columns and TV shows. Today he turns eighty, and is still going strong. In our article we also include some unique problems that another octogenarian composed for his coeval colleague. | Photo Nadja Wittmann