The chess tournament in New York caused a sensation in 1924. The venerable Manhattan Chess Club had invited the best players in the world, including two with the name Lasker: the German former World Champion Emanuel Lasker and the 20 years younger Edward Lasker. The two knew each other from Berlin and assumed that they needed to be related, but they did not know exactly how - third degree cousins, later showed their estates.

Emanuel Lasker was the second world champion in chess history after Austrian Wilhelm Steinitz and of the two Laskers the much better player. At the age of 56 years, he surprisingly won even the New York tournament. But Edward Lasker was the more skillful in many other ways.

He was born in Kempen (now Kepno) in 1885 as Eduard Lasker, studied mathematics, engineering and electrical engineering in Wroclaw and later at the Technical University of Charlottenburg. In his time in Berlin Edward Lasker played his first chess tournaments and published in 1911 as a student his first textbook; "Chess strategy" became a classic.

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Chess family: Eleven players, two Laskers in the tournament

His second passion was another board game: the Japanese Go, almost unknown outside of Asia. Thus he first came into contact as a student in 1905, as in the university library issue of the "Announcements of the German Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia," with the essay "The Japanese-Chinese game 'Go', a concurrent of chess ".

Three Laskers and the Go Game

The author was Oskar Korschelt, a chemist by profession. He had accepted a lectureship in Japan in 1876, then worked for the Japanese government and got to know the Go game. After his return in 1885 Korschelt made the game known in Europe. He also played chess and collected chess compositions. His collection of about 100,000 tasks was one of the largest in the world.

Edward Lasker read the essay and familiarized himself with the rules. Soon after, he and his friend Max Lange saw a Japanese student in a newspaper in a Berlin chess café, with go charts on the back and the curiosity of the two chess players. They began replaying these Go games - difficult enough given the Japanese characters. Lasker and Lange worked together and then played against each other.

Meanwhile, the great Emanuel Lasker lived for 14 years in the US and returned to Berlin in 1907, where his namesake showed him the go-game. Eduard Lasker also spurred on a Japanese classmate: Yasugoro Kitabatake taught both Laskers some strategies for the Go game.

After two years of teaching, the Laskers played about as well as their teacher. Emanuel Lasker's older brother Berthold had also joined the Go group. In chess, he was not much worse than Emanuel, but too nervous for tournaments. He became a doctor; his marriage to the poet Else Lasker-Schüler was already divorced at that time.

Game to replay : Edward Lasker immortalized himself in chess literature in 1912, with this blitz game against George Alan Thomas - a lady sacrifice pulls the opposing king as magnetic Matt.

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Kitabatake invited a Japanese professor who happened to be in Berlin to master the game of Go even better. The three Laskers were astonished when the professor was able to give them nine stones as a handicap - this is roughly equivalent to a lady in chess - and still won without much thought. The Germans concluded: You have to travel to Tokyo to study the secret of the game at the source.

After completing his studies, Eduard Lasker accepted a position at AEG in 1912 and immediately requested transfer to the field office in Tokyo. The management sent him to learn English in London - and in 1914 World War I began. Lasker decided to emigrate to the USA, where his mother Flora was born. The plan to become a Go master in Tokyo was put on hold.

Rich by the electric breast pump

But soon he saw in New York, a Japanese waiter Go play. That's how it came into contact with other players, including Lee Hartman, editor-in-chief of Harper's Magazine, and Karl Davis Robinson. The three formed a go-round at Lee Chumley's Restaurant and Bar, Greenwich Village, later the same year, the US Go Association.

Meanwhile, his name and skills in chess opened Edward Lasker's doors in the US. Between 1916 and 1921 he won five times the open US state championship, received the citizenship in 1923 and was invited in 1924 for the first major New York tournament. At the Alamac Hotel he met Emanuel Lasker, his Go partner from Berlin.

Favorites were the new world champion Raul Capablanca and the young exile Russian Alexander Alekhine. But they too failed at the ex-world chess champion; Emanuel Lasker won sovereignly. Edward was tenth, thus penultimate.

Maybe he was thinking somewhere else. At that time, Edward Lasker employed an idea for pumping out breast milk: is it not possible to operate the usual mechanical breast milk pumps better electrically? The electrical engineer built such a machine, the US Patent Office registered it registered on October 4, 1927 under the number US1644257A. His invention made him a millionaire.

The sun also laughed privately for Edward Lasker. From the thirties, he lived with the approximately 25 years younger Mona Karff together. The pair of lovers made no secret of this, but remained unmarried. Karff was born in 1908 in the Russian province of Bessarabia (now Moldova) and grew up in Tel Aviv. Her father, the Zionist Aviv Ratner, had brought it to land tenure and wealth in the League of Nations Mandate of Palestine and later became one of Israel's richest men.

The Laskers suffered heavily under the Nazis

Mona Karff moved to the USA in the thirties, increasing her fortune in the stock market and investing as an art lover in modern art works. She was a travel enthusiast and spoke eight languages ​​fluently. She also loved the opera - and played the game of chess.

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At the Women's World Cup in Stockholm in 1937 she was sixth, still under the flag of Palestine, and won the year after the first time the US Chess Championship for women. As an American, she played twice in women's World Cups: 1939 5th place, ten years later 14th place.

During the Nazi era and the World War, the large, ramified Jewish family Lasker suffered heavily. Emanuel Lasker was able to flee Germany in time in 1933, but lost many family members. His niece Anita Lasker-Wallfisch survived as a cellist in the girls' orchestra of Auschwitz and later testified, as did her sister Renate Lasker-Harpprecht. Both are among the last survivors of the Holocaust.

Mona Karff won the US champion title in Women's Chess seven times, most recently in 1974, and happily stayed with her boyfriend at the New York Marshall Chess Club. There Edward Lasker was chairman until his death in 1981, Mona Karff died in 1998.

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