ICCF Austria

The Austrian Correspondence chess subdivision of the Österreichischer Schachbund (ÖSB), the Fachgruppe Fernschach (OESB-FS) belongs to the ICCF national member federations as ICCF Austria. It was founded in 1947.

Correspondence chess had developed relatively late in Austria, in the second half of the 19th century.

It was not until 1865, when the "Wiener Schachgesellschaft" (Viennese chess society, founded in 1857) played a set of matches against some prominent clubs of other cities, including 1865-1866 Vienna-Insterburg 2-0, 1867-1869 Vienna- Berlin 2-0, 1872-1874 Vienna-London 0.5-1.5.

With the establishment of the "Wiener Schachzeitung" in 1898 and the beginning of Vienna's "golden era" of chess, playing chess boomed. At the same time under the protectorate of Georg Marco, the "Wiener Schachzeitung" organised some correspondence tournaments, which attracted some of the best known masters of those days : Adolf Zinkl, Carl Schlechter, Siegfried Reginald Wolf, Heinrich Wolf and even the very young Ernst Grünfeld.

In Graz Johann Berger was the first Austrian to win an important international correspondence tournament the "Monde Illustré 1889-1892" and he did so with the remarkable result of +45 =3 -0.

World war I brought a sudden end to this development, and it was only in the mid-twenties that Austrian correspondence chess came close to the heights of pre-war victories. Here the "Pan-European Tournaments" of the new "Wiener Schachzeithung" under the direction of Albert Becker played an important role.

New impulses came to Correspondence Chess in 1928 with the establishment of the IFSB (Internationaler Fernschachbund) and the magazine "Fernschach" (correspondence chess), where the Austrian Franz Kunert proved to be an excellent supervisor and designing mind of the new organisation.

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Wikipedia