13-03-2012, 11:15 PM
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I'm not especially hopeful but maybe somebody can through more light on a question than I could, when I recently tried to find out more about Karl Gilg's time as German POW near where I now live in East Lothian. I played against him in the mid-1970s in southern Bavaria. History buffs will know that his most famous scalp was against Alekhine in the mid-1920s.
See the link above and click on the first (and so far only) response to the main BCM website article for details. Gilg probably spent at least 18 months in East Lothian and I'm sure I found a pretty certain reference to a strong chess player who was almost certainly him ... but couldn't corroborate this completely.
I had no idea when I played him that Gilg - then still a very good player and a typically strong old IM, comparable in strength and in his lively, enterprising playing style to the likes of his close contemporaries, Ludwig Rellstab (who got into a Hastings Premier in the mid-1970s), and Kurt Richter, whose life has been the subject of longstanding research by our own CS chess historian, Alan McGowan - had a strong Scottish connection ... he never let on.
It's a small world!
I'm not especially hopeful but maybe somebody can through more light on a question than I could, when I recently tried to find out more about Karl Gilg's time as German POW near where I now live in East Lothian. I played against him in the mid-1970s in southern Bavaria. History buffs will know that his most famous scalp was against Alekhine in the mid-1920s.
See the link above and click on the first (and so far only) response to the main BCM website article for details. Gilg probably spent at least 18 months in East Lothian and I'm sure I found a pretty certain reference to a strong chess player who was almost certainly him ... but couldn't corroborate this completely.
I had no idea when I played him that Gilg - then still a very good player and a typically strong old IM, comparable in strength and in his lively, enterprising playing style to the likes of his close contemporaries, Ludwig Rellstab (who got into a Hastings Premier in the mid-1970s), and Kurt Richter, whose life has been the subject of longstanding research by our own CS chess historian, Alan McGowan - had a strong Scottish connection ... he never let on.
It's a small world!