Joseph Platz (11 April 1905,

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

, Germany – 30 December 1981,

Manchester, Connecticut Manchester is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town had a total population of 59,713. The urban center of the town is the Manchester census-designated place, with a population of 36,379 at the 202 ...

, USA) was a German-American

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

master. He won the championship of Cologne in 1926, won the championship of the Rhine at Karlsruhe 1928, and won the championship of Hannover in 1931. He also tied for 4th–6th at Cologne 1924, and tied for 4th–5th at Duisburg 1929 ( DSB Congress, ''Hauptturnier A''). Platz emigrated to the United States because of Nazi policy in Germany in the 1930s. He played a few training games with his friend, Emanuel Lasker, in New York in 1939–40. In the 1940s, he won the Bronx Championship six times. In 1948, he played in the U.S. Championship, placing 14th ( Herman Steiner won). Between 1954 and 1972, he won the Western Massachusetts & Connecticut Valley Open Championship 14 times. He won the Connecticut Championship three times. He tied for the New England Championship four times. He was a USCF Master Emeritus and a medical doctor. In 1978, he wrote ''Chess memoirs: The chess career of a physician and Lasker pupil''.

References

1905 births 1981 deaths Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States German chess players American chess players Jewish chess players 20th-century chess players {{Germany-chess-bio-stub