Leopold Trebitsch Memorial Tournament was a chess competition organized by the family of Austrian silk manufacturer Leopold Trebitsch. Twenty tournaments were played in Vienna between 1907 and 1938.[1]
Wealthy industrialist Leopold Trebitsch (1842–1906) was a lover of chess and a patron of chess competitions. His family advanced the considerable sum of 100,000 kronen to the Vienna Chess Club (Wiener Schachklub) to organize a series of tournaments. Since Trebitsch died one month before the start of the first tournament, the competitions were named in his memory. Six of the first nine events (1907–18) were won by Carl Schlechter, but his death in December 1918, along with the loss of the Club's Trebitsch fund in the aftermath of Austria's debacle in World War I, put a temporary halt to the tournament. In 1926, Leopold Trebitsch's son, Oskar, made more funds available, enabling eleven additional competitions to be held until 1938, when Germany's annexation of Austria ended the event.
Winners
edit# Year Winner 1 1907 Jacques Mieses (German Empire) / Saxony 2 1909/10 Richard Réti (Austria-Hungary) / Slovakia 3 1910/11 Carl Schlechter (Austria-Hungary) / Austria 4 1911/12 Carl Schlechter (Austria-Hungary) / Austria 5 1913 Carl Schlechter (Austria-Hungary) / Austria 6 1914 Carl Schlechter (Austria-Hungary) / Austria 7 1915 Carl Schlechter (Austria-Hungary) / Austria 8 1916/17 Carl Schlechter (Austria-Hungary) / Austria 9 1917/18 Milan Vidmar (Austria-Hungary) / Slovenia 10 1926 Rudolf Spielmann (Austria) 11 1927 Ernst Grünfeld (Austria) 12 1928 Ernst Grünfeld (Austria)
Sándor Takács (Hungary)13 1929/30 Rudolf Spielmann (Austria)
Hans Kmoch (Austria)14 1931 Albert Becker (Austria) 15 1932 Albert Becker (Austria) 16 1933 Ernst Grünfeld (Austria)
Hans Müller (Austria)17 1934/35 Albert Becker (Austria) 18 1935 Erich Eliskases (Austria)
Lajos Steiner (Hungary)19 1936 Henryk Friedman (Poland) 20 1937/38 Lajos Steiner (Hungary)