LAJOS ( pronounced ‘Lahyosh’ in Hungarian) STEINER

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STEINER, LAJOS (1903-1975), was a Hungarian of Jewish ancestry born on 14 June 1903 in the Transylvanian city of Nagyvárad (renamed Oradea and Romanian territory since the Treaty of Trianon, 1920). A qualified mechanical engineer & mechanical draftsman, the international chess master was one of four children of Bernát Steiner, mathematics teacher, and his wife Cecilia, née Schwarz, both of whom were Jewish. Lajos was educated at the Technical High School, Budapest and gained a diploma in mechanical engineering (1926) from the Technikum Mittweida, Germany. Both he and his elder brother Endre started playing in master chess events in Budapest while they were schoolboys. Lajos was granted the title of master at the age of 19. At the Kecskemét, (Hungary ) tournament in 1927 he tied for second with Aron Nimzovich behind Alexander Alekhine, a future world champion. In the late 1920s Steiner spent two years working as an engineer in the United States of America. Back in Europe, he turned professional, but made a precarious living from tournaments. Apart from two Hungarian championship wins (1931 and 1936), his best performances were at Mährisch Ostrau, Germany (1933, tied for second), Maribor, Yugoslavia (1934, tied for first), and Vienna (1935, tied for first).

In 1936 Steiner toured Australia. Although he played in the 1936-37 Australian championship in Perth, and won every game, he was ineligible for the title. Until the outbreak of World War II, Australia offered a safe haven and accepted some 6,475 new settlers mainly of Central European Jewry observing and fleeing Nazi Germany’s legalized unbearable discriminations and manifest threats. Lajos Steiner was one of them. He returned to Western Australia aboard the steamer Charon on 11 March 1939, en route to settle in Sydney. His father and brother were to die in Nazi concentration camps. At the district registrar’s office, Burwood, on 19 October 1939 Steiner married Augusta Edna Kingston, who had won the New South Wales women’s chess championship six times. They were to remain childless. Unable to earn a living from tournament chess, he found work as a mechanical draughtsman, first with International Combustion Australasia Pty Ltd and then with Electricity Meter and Allied Industries Ltd. He was naturalized in 1944. In 1949 he was appointed a designing draughtsman at the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Ltd’s chemical factory at Lane Cove.

As a European chess master, Steiner greatly improved the standard of Australian chess simply by playing in tournaments over the next twenty-five years. He competed in six Australian championships and won four (1945, 1946-47, 1952-53 and 1958-59); he also won nine of his ten attempts at the New South Wales title (1940-41, 1943, 1944, 1945-46, 1953, 1955, 1958). Possessing total powers of concentration and a remarkable knowledge of uncommon variations of opening play, he was impressive as one of the few thinking chess masters. Fellow players appreciated his unruffled, courteous and cheerful demeanour.

A tower of strength in the Metropolitan Social Chess Club, Steiner contributed numerous articles to chess master Cecil J.S. Purdy’s Chess World magazine. One of them was called ‘ Kings of the Chess Board’ published in 1949, an account of his only return to Europe where he played in three tournaments the year earlier: at Karlovy Vary (Czechoslovakia), Budapest (Hungary) and Saltsjäbaden (Sweden). Due to his extended absence from the main chess centres of the world, the Fédération Internationale des Echecs never awarded him the title of Grand Master. Steiner lived at Neutral Bay, Sydney. He was an all rounder in body and mind being fluent in four languages (Hungarian, Romanian, German, English) and looking like ‘ a well-trained athlete’ most of his life. In his younger days he was a keen amateur wrestler, a good swimmer, tennis player and sculler. He stopped competing in major chess tournaments in the early 1960s, but continued to play A-grade for Chatswood Chess Club and willingly helped young players. He died on 22 April 1975 at Castlecrag, Sydney, New South Wales.

John S. Purdy, The Australian Dictionary of Biography.

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