Wolfgang Uhlmann

Wolfgang Uhlmann (29 March 193524 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.

Chess career 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. He emerged as a strong player, progressing to the title of German Youth Champion in 1951. He learned the trade of letterpress printing, but his career in chess prevented him from practicing it.

Uhlmann won the 1954, 1955 and 1958 East Germany Chess Championships, 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 . At the 1964 event in Tel Aviv, Israel he scored a combined 15 points out of 18, earning him the individual board one gold medal. 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.

In 1964, Uhlmann shared victory with Lev Polugaevsky at a tournament in Sarajevo and tied for first with former World Champion Vasily Smyslov at the Capablanca Memorial. He tied for first with Borislav Ivkov, and ahead of World Champion Tigran Petrosian) at Zagreb 1965, tied for first with Boris Spassky at Hastings 1965/66, tied for first with David Bronstein at Szombathely 1966, and tied for first with Bronstein at the Berlin Lasker Memorial in 1968. At Raach in 1969, a zonal tournament, he finished two points clear of a field which included Lajos Portisch, giving him access to the Palma de Mallorca Interzonal. and reached the Candidates Matches the following year. But he lost his quarter-final match to Bent Larsen, 5½–3½. The match featured three games in the French Defense, Tarrasch Variation and Larsen playing the uncommon King's Fianchetto Opening. Uhlmann was not able to qualify for a Candidates Tournament again.

He also enjoyed some success in the 1970s and 1980s. He tied for first with Bronstein and Vlastimil Hort at Hastings 1975/76, placed second behind Anatoly Karpov at Skopje 1976, tied for first with Farago and Rainer Knaak at Halle 1978, and won Halle 1981 by a full point.

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 . 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.

Death and legacy 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.