Arbiter, Diplomat, Obsessive: The Legacy of Chess Grandmaster Lothar Schmid

If there is one chess event somehow fixed in the minds of those who otherwise know nothing about the game, it is the 1972 world championship match in Iceland between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Many books and even Hollywood films have kept retelling the story, so compelling was the odyssey of a lone American, at the height of the Cold War, taking on—and beating—the Soviet Union at its favourite game. Spassky was just the latest of a series of state-backed Grandmasters who had held the title continuously since 1948.

As a teenager, I was one of countless Westerners whose life-long fascination for chess was directly inspired by these events and, therefore, also familiar with the figure of Lothar Schmid. A distinguished Grandmaster himself, who represented West Germany at eleven chess Olympiads, Schmid was the chief arbiter of the Fischer-Spassky match. He was intimately involved in the struggle to keep the volatile American genius at the board, when Fischer’s unreasonable and erratic behaviour seemed certain to see the match abandoned.

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Fischer had lost the first game of a scheduled 24, after an inexplicable blunder in a completely drawn position, and then forfeited the second, after failing to turn up—he had objected to the presence of cameras, though they were part of an agreed contract to record the games for a worldwide television audience. His threatened withdrawal was deemed so significant on the global stage that even Henry Kissinger, then US Secretary of State, called Fischer to implore him to continue, rather than abandon the match to the Soviets. That had no effect.

Boris Spassky waits for Bobby Fischer ahead of the 2nd game. From a collection of 84 press photographs of the famed match between Spassky and Fischer. Estimate 2,000-3,000 GBP .

But then Lothar Schmid took upon himself the authority to move the third game of the match to a small, closed room, with no cameras, or indeed audience, present. He had spoken with Boris Spassky, who, against the advice of his team (which in turn were getting instructions from the Soviet leadership) agreed to this. Spassky was a great sportsman and genuinely liked Fischer. And, also, he was two nil up in the match, and had never before lost a game to Fischer, having beat him twice in tournament play and once in a match between the USSR and the US.

Just before the start of the third game, Fischer noticed there was a video camera in the back room and started yelling more objections. Spassky, now enraged himself, got up and said he would go back to the main playing hall. Schmid then attempted to calm Fischer down by pointing out that the camera was unplugged and reminded Spassky of his agreement to play in the back room. By Schmid’s account (which Spassky later said was exaggerated) he then took both players by the neck, pushed them to their chairs and said ‘Now: play!’ The rest is history: Fischer, with the black pieces, won that third game against a possibly distracted Spassky, and seized a psychological initiative he never lost, becoming world champion after the Russian resigned the 21^st game of the match on 1 September 1972.

Six years later Schmid’s gifts as an arbiter in the most politically and personally charged circumstances were again put to the test when in charge of the next world championship match in the Philipines, this time between the Russian Anatoly Karpov (who had become champion by default in 1975 when Fischer resigned his title rather than play) and the defector Viktor Korchnoi. The Soviet regime was so vengeful towards the apostate Korchnoi that it instructed all its media outlets not even to mention his name: he could be described only as “the opponent”. Then after a game during which Karpov’s team supplied him with yoghurt to keep his flagging energy up, Korchnoi’s team protested that the colour of the yoghurt might contain some sort of message based on backstage analysis: for example, to offer a draw.

Schmid solved the dispute by declaring that for future games Karpov could be supplied only with yoghurt of violet colour, at precisely 7:15 pm and at no other time. After the 27^th game of the match, which Karpov won to take a seemingly unassailable lead, Schmid, to some surprise, left the Philipines “on pressing business”, and his deputy arbiter took over.

What that “pressing business” was, nobody said. I have my own conjecture linked specifically to the Sotheby’s auction of the gems from his astonishing collection of chess books and artefacts, which he began accumulating, precociously, at the age of 15: Lothar must have been closing in on a deal to acquire something special, perhaps via auction. For him, as with so many great collectors in other fields, the hunt was completely compelling—a governing obsession, even. And Schmid could afford it. Through inheritance he had been co-owner of the Karl May publishing house, whose Winnetou series sold over 200 million copies, and he had eventually bought out his brothers to become the sole shareholder.

Yet as the Dutch chess author and collector Dirk Jan Ten Geuzendam told me, “Lothar often paid more than he had readily available, he was so obsessed with filling any gaps in his collection.” As Ten Geuzendam put it: “Whenever Lothar found out that someone had a book he didn’t have, he would not rest until it was his.”

Spassky and Schmid (right) await Fischer ahead of the 2nd game.

In a way, this makes Schmid’s career as the world’s most esteemed chess arbiter all the more intriguing. That task requires a high degree of self-effacement, alertness to others’ feelings and great calmness. Whereas as a collector, he was subject to uncontrollable acquisitiveness and an all-consuming passion.

Incidentally, Bobby Fischer was himself an occasional visitor to the Schmid home, where the books piled up in vast mounds. And among the treasured documents there were the score sheets from the match against Spassky, signed by both players, which Schmid had been allowed to take with him.

When the Icelandic authorities asked him to return the originals, Schmid sent back all but this one.