“Playing such a demanding game for relaxation…” – The chess passion of Ernst Cassirer

Ernst Cassirer was a prominent and important German philosopher, who was born 150 years ago on July 28, 1874, in Breslau. In 1919, he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the newly founded University of Hamburg, but after the Nazis rose to power, Cassirer emigrated to England, where he taught philosophy at Oxford. Later, he moved to the United States via Sweden, teaching at both Yale University and Columbia University in New York, where he died on April 13, 1945. Apart from philosophy Cassirer’s great passion was chess, and he occasionally discussed both with Emanuel Lasker.