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Chess player
I was born in Budapest. I am a chess player, achieving success as a multiple Hungarian champion and Olympic gold medalist.
Birth name
Born
1901-06-27, Budapest
Deceased
1944-12-29, Budapest
Profession
Chess player
Awards
He was born into a Jewish family with four children. His father, Bernát Steiner, was a mathematics teacher, and his mother was Cecilia Schwartz. Among his siblings, Lajos also became a Chess Olympiad champion, and even their father was considered a strong player. In 1907, at the national tournament held in Székesfehérvár, he defeated the young Richárd Réti, as well as Leó Forgács, who later won the event.
Due to the Numerus Clausus law, he was not allowed to attend university in Hungary, so he began his studies in Berlin, but later abandoned them and became an official at the Anglo-Hungarian Bank. He later became an independent furrier, owning his own shop and workshop.
He died from a grenade explosion during the Siege of Budapest, while serving as a forced laborer.
At the age of 15, he became a member of the Budapest Chess Club, later playing for the Újpest Chess Club. In 1921, although he finished near the bottom of the field at the Budapest international tournament, he managed to defeat Max Euwe, who would become World Champion 15 years later.
Between 1924 and 1937, he participated in five official and three unofficial Chess Olympiads representing Hungary, playing a total of 108 games and scoring 70 points. In team events at the official Olympiads, he won 2 gold and 2 silver medals; at the unofficial Olympiads, he won 2 gold and 1 silver. Individually, he earned 1 silver medal.
According to Chessmetrics historical ratings, his peak estimated Elo rating was 2644 in August 1939, ranking him 16th in the world at that time.
The Dohány Street synagogue is one of Budapest’s touristic highlights as it is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. The synagogue was built in 1859 in the Moorish style and it can seat 3000 people. Its huge size demonstrates the significance and the high economic and cultural standards of the Budapest Jewry of the age.
The temple was designed by Ludwig Förster (1797-1863), a German architect, professor of the Vienna Academy. The clerk of works was the architect Ignác Wechselmann (1828-1903) who later bequeathed his entire wealth to the Institute of the Blind. After Förster left, Frigyes Feszl, the famous architect of the Budapest Vigadó designed the temple’s inner sanctum. The official consecration of the synagogue took place on 6 September 1859. The interior of the synagogue is 1200 square metres, the towers are 44 metres high. There are 1497 seats for men downstairs and 1472 for women in the galleries, altogether the seating capacity of the flat-ceilinged inner space is nearly 3000 people.
Atomic physics
