Antonius van der Linde

Antonius van der Linde (14.11.1833-13.8.1897)

Antonius van der Linde (14.11.1833-13.8.1897) was born in Haarlem in the Netherlands. After a theological education in Amsterdam, he devoted himself to historical research, in particular on Spinoza (doctorate in Göttingen in 1862) and on the literature and history of chess. In 1874, he published his monumental two-volume work Geschichte und Litteratur des Schachspiels in Berlin, which is still considered a standard work on chess history and bibliography today. Other chess publications included Das erste Jartausend der Schachlitteratur (Berlin 1865), De schaakpartijen van Gioachino Greco (Nijmegen 1865), Das Schachspiel des 16.\ Jahrhunderts (Berlin 1873) and the Quellenstudien zur Geschichte des Schachspiels, also published in Berlin in 1881. When an Amsterdam bank went bankrupt in 1875, van der Linde lost his entire fortune and was subsequently forced to sell his extensive collections on Spinoza (166 volumes) and chess (800 volumes and manuscripts) to the Royal Library in The Hague - this marked the birth of one of the largest chess collections in the world, whose founder died 125 years ago, lonely and in desolate personal circumstances.

Wikipedia:

Life
As a child, Antonius van der Linde was sent by his Mennonite mother to a school run by this church organization, where he developed a passion for metaphysics and theology at an early age, which initially led him to pursue a career as a clergyman in Amsterdam. But in 1861 he enrolled at the University of Göttingen, where he received his doctorate in 1862 with a thesis on Spinoza.

He returned to the Netherlands in the same year and settled in Nijmegen, where he became more interested in chess. He became a member of the chess circles there and began to publish his first works on chess. In 1865, his first work on chess was published in Nijmegen: De schaakpartijen van Gioachino Greco. A short time later, he played a correspondence chess match with the Berlin chess master Jean Dufresne, which van der Linde won 1.5-0.5.

In 1870, van der Linde published a paper that made him an unpopular person in the Netherlands. In it he carefully refuted the widespread legend that Laurens Janszoon Coster and not Johannes Gutenberg was the inventor of the printing press. In 1871 he moved to Berlin to learn Sanskrit. In 1874 he published his most important work on chess in the German capital, the History and Literature of the Game of Chess. Even today it is considered a standard work on chess history and bibliography.

In 1874 van der Linde also returned to his homeland and settled in Arnhem. In 1875 his book Het Schaakspel in Nederland was published. In the same year he lost all his assets invested there due to the bankruptcy of an Amsterdam bank. Van der Linde sold his Spinoza collection (166 volumes) as well as his chess book collection (800 volumes and manuscripts) to the Royal Library in The Hague. This became the basis of one of the largest chess book collections in the world (“Bibliotheca van der Linde-Niemeijeriana”).

In 1876, van der Linde was appointed chief librarian of the Royal State Library in Wiesbaden. This was an expression of recognition for the foreign scholar, whose “external existence” was thereby made easier by the Prussian cultural administration. Two more important works by van der Linde on chess were published in Berlin in 1881. The titles were in their original form: The first thousand years of chess literature and Source studies on the history of chess.

Because he had neglected the library because of his writing activities, van der Linde was forced into retirement in 1894 due to “organizational incompetence”. His second marriage ended in divorce in 1883. He died lonely and in desolate personal circumstances.

The judgement of posterity
The historian Walther Peter Fuchs described van der Linde as a scholar "of unusual fertility in such widely divergent fields as dogmatics, exegesis of biblical writings, church and secular history, philosophy, contemporary criticism, biography, bibliography, heraldry and much more, as well as a translator of works by Spinoza, Ebrard, Schelling and Friedrich Julius Stahl". In addition to his works on chess history and the aforementioned history of the invention of the art of printing in 1886, for which he was awarded the title of professor, his thorough study of Kaspar Hauser, a modern historical legend, deserves mention. However, it also reveals one of van der Linde's weaknesses, namely his penchant for biting diatribe and cynicism.

As a chess historian, his importance is still undisputed today. He saw chess history as the history of chess-related literature. He borrowed the methods of interpretation he used from his original subject, i.e. theological exegesis. Although van der Linde was highly committed to historical truth, he tended to take a decidedly partisan stance and displayed German-national prejudices.