Jan Hein Donner

Johannes Hendrikus ( Hein ) Donner ( born July 6, 1927 in The Hague, † November 27, 1988 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch chess Grandmaster.

Life

Johannes Hendrikus Donner, whose father John Donner was from 1926 to 1933 Minister of Justice of the Netherlands, spent several semesters studying law and psychology, before he became a professional chess player.

He won in 1954, 1957 and 1958, the Dutch championship and was almost 20 years as the second best player in the country behind the former World Chess Champion Max Euwe. He represented his country from 1950 to 1978 in Dubrovnik in Buenos Aires in eleven Chess Olympiads, scoring 92 points out of 153 games. In 1976, he won the Dutch team a silver medal in 1950 and 1952 he was also awarded silver at the board rating. In 1959 he was awarded the Grandmaster title by FIDE.

His athletic achievements were his first place in the Hoogovens tournament at Beverwijk 1963, before the Soviet grandmasters David Bronstein and Yuri Averbakh and his victory over Bobby Fischer at the Chess Olympiad 1962. Further successes he achieved in Bewerwijk 1950 ( first against Euwe and Rossolimo ), Amsterdam, 1958 ( second with Euwe before Bronstein ), Amsterdam 1964 ( second behind Larsen ) and Amsterdam in 1965 (first in front of Parma). His best historical Elo rating was 2622 in August 1966.

In the Netherlands, thunder made ​​a name for himself through his publicist for many newspapers and journals. He was regarded as a provocative and controversial writer who was not afraid to play its disputes with chess players or other publicists in public. In particular, with Lodewijk Prins whom he had a many years lasting enmity. He wrote columns for de Volkskrant, among others, and NRC Handelsblad. When he was strong physically restricted by a stroke in 1983, he still continued that work until his death.

Also in the belletristic literature was thunder intake: His close friend, the Dutch author Harry Mulisch, he was the model for the figure of Onno Quist in the novel De Ontdekking van de hemel (1992 ) (Eng. The Discovery of Heaven ) (1993 ), which was filmed in 2001 in British- Dutch production.