Schachnovelle; Chess Story; The Royal Game

[This page by Arnhilt Hoefle]

Schachnovelle [Chess Story, The Royal Game]

Stefan Zweig’s Schachnovelle, the last work of fiction he completed in his Brazilian exile, was published in 1942 after the author’s death. In contrast to many of his novellas, Schachnovelle is not set in a pre-Republican imperial Austrian context. It is, on the contrary, set against the background of the Third Reich. In Schachnovelle Zweig accuses the brutality and terror of the fascist regime. The novella is undoubtedly one of Zweig’s most widely received works of fiction in contemporary Europe.

In line with common definitions of the literary form of the novella, to which Zweig refers to explicitly in the title, Zweig composed a short and concise narration of a single, striking and unique event. Schachnovelle is structured by a frame narrative, a technique typical for novellas, which Zweig adopted in several of his prose writings. In the frame narrative, a first-person narrator, an Austrian emigrant, happens be on the same passenger steamer from New York to Buenos Aires as the reigning chess world champion, Mirko Czentovic. Led by the Scottish oil magnate McConnor, a group of wealthy chess enthusiasts challenges the world champion, for an appropriate fee, in a game of simultaneous chess. Dr. B., an Austrian emigrant too, stumbles across their game and helps the struggling chess amateurs to end their game in a stunning draw. Fascinated by Dr. B.’s extraordinary chess skills they try to persuade him to play alone against Czentovic, but he just walks away rejecting.

The first-person narrator, who is then asked to talk to Dr. B. once more as his fellow Austrian countryman, finds him on deck. Dr. B. introduces himself as the former legal adviser and trust manager of wealthy Austrian monasteries and of several members of the Austrian imperial family. In the course of an embedded narrative in the form of an extended monologue, he unfolds the background of his impressive chess skills. He reveals that he was kept imprisoned by the Gestapo, the National Socialist Secret State Police, which was eager to get hold of these funds and properties. Kept alone in a hotel room he was completely isolated from the outside world for many months. One day, however, he was able to grasp a small book from a stranger’s coat while waiting for one of the Gestapo’s interrogations. As it turned out, the book contained a collection of 150 past masters’ chess games. Dr. B. began to read through the games, being initially very happy about the intellectual exercise and the distraction from the total isolation. But after having memorised every single game in the compilation and playing them over and over again, he began to play chess against himself, splitting himself into an “I white” and “I black”. In this kind of fever, what he calls ‘chess poisoning’, he endlessly played chess against himself in his split mind. He eventually suffered from a nervous breakdown and was set free for reasons of insanity, attested by a sympathetic doctor. On the passenger steamer he happened to find a real chess board, for the first time after being released, and engaged in the games of the strangers due to mere curiosity.

Back in the frame narrative, Dr. B. however reluctantly agrees to play one single game against Czentovic and beats the world champion sensationally. Czentovic immediately asks for a return game and Dr. B. agrees despite other initial intentions. In their second game, Czentovic, who is depicted as a primitive as well as arrogant man, lets the time lapse away coldly, in order to irritate and distract his increasingly restless, impatient opponent. Dr. B., stricken with the same fever again, finally gives up and withdraws not to touch a chess board again in his life.

English Translation

Stefan Zweig, Chess: A Novel, trans. by Anthea Bell (London: Penguin Classics, 2006)

Further Reading

Donald G. Daviau and Harvey I. Dunkle, ‘Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle’, Monatshefte 65 (1973), 370-84

D. B. Douglas, ‘The Humanist Gambit: A Study of Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle’, AUMLA 53 (1980), 17-24

Brian Murdoch, ‘Game, Image and Ambiguity in Stefan Zweig’s Schachnovelle’, New German Studies 11 (1983), 171-89

Philip Oltermann, ‘Endgames in a Hypermodern Age: Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle Reconsidered’, KulturPoetik 8 (2008), 170-86