Linde, Antonius van der

Theologian, philologist

Born: 14.11.1833 in Haarlem (Netherlands)

died: 13.08.1897 in Wiesbaden

Linde, the son of a Frisian saddler and a Mennonite mother, was initially supposed to become a missionary and embarked on a theological career. However, he fell out with his congregation. In 1861/62, he studied history and philosophy in Göttingen and completed his doctorate on Spinoza.

He then settled in Nijmegen, studied chess and published his first works on the history of the royal game. Because he proved in one of his numerous scientific research papers in 1870 that it was not the Haarlem wine merchant Laurens Janszoon Coster who invented letterpress printing, but Johannes Gutenberg from Mainz, he made himself unpopular in his home country as a "costermonger". In 1871, he moved to Berlin and studied Sanskrit, among other things, in order to research the origins of chess. In 1874, he published his two-volume standard work "History and Literature of Chess". In 1875, he lost his fortune when an Amsterdam bank went bankrupt. He sold his chess book collection to the Royal Library in The Hague, which formed the basis of one of the largest chess book collections in the world.

In 1876, Linde was appointed librarian of the Royal State Library in Wiesbaden by the Prussian Minister of Culture, Adalbert Falk, in recognition of his scientific work and his support for the German Empire. He was its director from 1876-95. During this time, further important works on chess literature and source studies on the history of chess were published. In 1880 Linde was honorary president of an international chess congress in the Wiesbaden Kurhaus. He also wrote a study on Kaspar Hauser. He was awarded the title of professor in 1886 for his "History of the Invention of the Art of Printing".

Linde was a genius who also possessed psychopathic traits. He sensed conspirators everywhere in Wiesbaden and brought numerous libel suits. Meanwhile, he neglected the state library in the worst possible way. After being visited by two commissions from Berlin, he was removed from office in 1895.

He is buried in the North Cemetery. To mark the 100th anniversary of his death, an international congress of chess history researchers was held at the Hessian Main State Archives in WiesbadenWiesbaden in 1997.