Aaron (Albert) Alexandre (Hebrew: אהרון אלכסנדר, around 1765/68, Hohenfeld, Franconia – 16 November 1850, London, England) was a Jewish German–French–English chess player and writer.
Aaron Alexandre, a Bavarian trained as a rabbi, arrived in France in 1793.[1] Encouraged by the French Republic's policy of religious toleration, he became a French citizen. At first, he worked as a German teacher and as mechanical inventor. Eventually, chess became his primary occupation. He tried to make a complete survey of the chess openings, publishing his findings as the Encyclopédie des échecs (Encyclopedia of Chess, Paris, 1837).
He continued with a survey of endgame analyses and a compilation of nearly two thousand chess problems, which he published in 1846 as Collection des plus beaux Problèmes d'Echecs, Paris, and simultaneously in English and German translations: Beauties of Chess, London, and Praktische Sammlung bester Schachspiel-Probleme, Leipzig.[2]
Both books were accepted as standard reference collections, demonstrating Alexandre’s great technical knowledge. In chess as in his other activities, "he preferred erudition to performance".[3] In 1838, he won a match against Howard Staunton in London.
References
- ^ Saint-Amant [Pierre-Charles Fournier de], Nécrologie: A. Alexandre, La Régence, 1st ser., 3, no. 1 (January 1851): 3–13.
- ^ Knight's Tour Notes, Part Cb: Chronology 1800 – 1899
- ^ Crescendo of the Virtuoso "ch1"
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