Erich Eliskases

Who was Erich Eliskases?

Erich Gottlieb Eliskases was a chess Grandmaster of the 1930s and 1940s, who represented Austria, Germany and Argentina in international competition.

Born in Innsbruck, Austro-Hungarian Empire, he learned chess at the age of twelve and quickly displayed an aptitude for the game, winning the Schlechter chess club championship in his first year at the club, aged just fourteen. At fifteen, he was the Tyrolean Champion and at sixteen, joint winner of the Austrian Championship.

His college education in Innsbruck and Vienna centred on business studies; it was chess, though, that captured his imagination and he had exceptional results at the Olympiads of 1930, 1933 and 1935. After the Anschluss of March 1938, he won the German national championship at Bad Oeynhausen in 1938 and 1939. He played under the German flag at the 1939 Buenos Aires Olympiad, during which World War II began, when Eliskases decided to stay in Argentina rather than return to the scene of the conflict. Brazilian authorities threatened to intern and expel Eliskases as they had severed all links with Nazi Germany. Some Brazilian chess enthusiasts helped Eliskases avoid that fate by hiring him as a chess teacher.