Bernhard Horwitz

I wanted to post some additional information of Horwitz in ChessDweeb's Blog entry Bernhard Horwitz - Classical Chess Ending 4 of 150 but for some reason the software wouldn't let me insert a game.

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Horwitz, who was born in born in Neustrelitz, Germany on May 10, 1807, was one of the "Seven Sisters" of chess. The "Seven Sisters" is the English name of the constellation known as the Pleiades. From 1837 to the early 1840's, a loosely formed group of German chess players who referred to themselves as the Berliner Pleiades helped advance the cause of chess in the pre-Morphy era. Individually, each of these men was very accomplished. The members were:  Dr. Ludwig E. Bledow, Wilhelm Hanstein, Karl Schorn, Bernhard Horwitz, Karl Mayet, Paul Rudolph von Bilguer and Tassilo von Heydebrand von der Lasa.

Horowitz, a painter, moved to London in 1845. He played Staunton in a match the following year, losing 14 to 7 with 3 draws. He played, and lost, a match the next year against Lionel Kieseritzky. He played in the 1st International Chess Tournament in London, 1851, coming in 7th out of 16. That same year, he beat Bird in a match.

Horowitz' main love was problems and endgame studies. He joined forces with Josef Kling (another German emigrant who had a coffee house and chess parlor on Oxford Street) and in 1851, they published their endgame book, Chess Studies.

Horwitz won the first study-composing tourney, arranged by Lowenthal as part of the 1862 London International Tournament.

He was capable of some very bad chess:

and some very good chess:

Horwitz seemed to have stopped playing around 1861, but lived on until August 29, 1885.  On his death, Steinitz wrote:

"His genius for end positions was unequalled by any chess master, and with the greatest facility he evolved and demonstrated profound ideas which most experts could only arrive at by laborious calculations."