Andreas Ascharin

Andreas Ascharin (also Russian Андрей Александрович Ашарин/Andrei Alexandrowitsch Ascharin; wiss. Transliteration Andrej Aleksandrovič Ašarin; * 12 Junejul. / 24 June 1843greg. in Pernau, Livland Governorate; † 12 Decemberjul. / 24 December 1896greg. in Riga) was a Baltic-Russian writer, educator and translator. He was also known as a chess player.

Biography
Asharin's father was Russian, his mother belonged to a Baltic German family. After attending grammar school in Dorpat, he studied law at the University of Dorpat; according to other sources, he first studied mathematics and then law from 1865 to 1874.Between 1875 and 1879, he lived in the Russian capital and wrote as a journalist for the St. Petersburg newspaper and the St. Petersburg Herald. He then moved to Riga in 1879 and taught German at the Alexander and Lomonosov grammar schools. In later years, Ascharin continued to be active as a publicist.

Literary translator and poet
His origins proved to be seminal, as Ascharin stood out particularly as a translator of Russian literature into German. He also published his own poems. It was in Asharin's translations that works by Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Alexei Tolstoy and Nikolai Gogol, among others, first became known in Germany. Ascharin explained his theory of translation in the foreword to the volume of poetry Nordische Klänge (1894).

Chess activities
During his time in St Petersburg, he took part in several chess tournaments. In 1876, Ascharin won the first Russian Masters Tournament ahead of Mikhail Tschigorin and Emanuel Schiffers. He lost a match against Friedrich Amelung in 1877 by 4:5 (+3 =2 -4). In the St Petersburg tournament of 1879, which Chigorin won in a play-off against Simon Alapin, Ascharin came sixth.[4] In Riga he was in charge of the chess columns in the Rigaer Tageblatt and the Düna-Zeitung. He was also chairman of the Riga Chess Club. Two years before his death, he published one of the early books on the subject of humour and chess under the title Schach-Humoresken, which also included memories of chess opponents such as Tschigorin and his friend Amelung.

Works (selection)
Poems; Riga 1878
Russian treasure trove of novellas, 2 volumes; Mitau 1879-1880
Nordic Sounds. Russian poems in German translations; Riga 1894
Chess humoresques; Riga 1894

Source: Germain Wikipedia