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.
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Wolfgang Uhlmann was born on 29 March 1935 in Dresden, Germany. His father, Alfred, a baker, taught him the game at the age of six but, at age sixteen, he contracted tuberculosis and spent one and a half years in a sanatorium, where he studied the game relentlessly.[1] He emerged as a strong player,[2] progressing to the title of German Youth Champion in 1951.[3] He learned the trade of letterpress printing,[4] but his career in chess prevented him from practicing it.
Uhlmann won the 1954, 1955 and 1958 East Germany Chess Championships,[5] and in 1956 was awarded the International Master title, and later the Grandmaster title in 1959.[6] He was the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) most outstanding player at the Chess Olympiads of 1956–1990, where he made 11 appearances, mostly on top board. At the 1964 event in Tel Aviv, Israel he scored a combined 15 points out of 18,[7] earning him the individual board one gold medal.[8] In the same year, he won his fourth national championship. An individual bronze medal, for a combined score of 13 points out of 18, followed in 1966 at Havana, Cuba.[9][10]
He also enjoyed some success in the 1970s and 1980s. He tied for first with Bronstein and Vlastimil Hort at Hastings 1975/76,[19] placed second behind Anatoly Karpov at Skopje 1976,[20] tied for first with Farago and Rainer Knaak at Halle 1978,[21] and won Halle 1981 by a full point.[22]
Old Hands
In 2012, aged 77, Uhlmann was a member of the "Old Hands" group of senior previous top players who played the "Snowdrops", a group of young woman masters, in a display match. The other Old Hands were Oleg Romanishin, Vlastimil Hort, and Friðrik Ólafsson, while the women were Tania Sachdev, Alina Kashlinskaya, Valentina Gunina, and Kristýna Havlíková[cs].[23]ChessBase described the round 8 game Kashlinskaya–Uhlmann as the most beautiful of the event, with Uhlmann's play evoking the style of the young Mikhail Tal.[24]
Uhlmann died on 24 August 2020, in Dresden, where he had lived his entire life. He was 85, and had entered hospital following a fall; he had, however, been sick for much of his life from complications resulting from his childhood tuberculosis.[2] He is survived by his widow, Christine, two children and two grandchildren.[25][26]
Uhlmann was acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on the French Defence, particularly the Winawer Variation,[5] having refined and improved many of its variations and written the book Ein Leben lang Französisch (Winning with the French)[5] on the opening. He is one of very few grandmasters to have deployed the French almost exclusively in reply to 1. e4.
Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ/DDR. 1945–1990. Band 2: Maassen – Zylla. K. G. Saur, München 1997, ISBN3-598-11177-0.
"Old Hands catch Snowdrops and win Podebrady 17:15". ChessBase. 18 December 2012. Retrieved 27 August 2020. Especially the game Kashlinskaya-Uhlmann was considered the most beautiful of the event – the multiple East German Champion, it was said, played it like the young Mihail Tal
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