Jaenisch Carl Friedrich Andreyevich Von (11.08.1813 – 17.03.1872)

Chess player born in Finland, Jaenisch was an assistant professor of mechanics.

In the army,  he was commissioned in the Engineers and he rose to the rank of Major. In 1838 he began to write a book on chess openings and two years later, in 1840, he left the army “because he loved chess so much”.
To further his research, Jaenisch traveled to Warsaw and Germany where he collaborated on theHandbuch with Alexander Petroff and Baron von der Lasa, the best two analysts of the time.  Jaenisch’s importance in the history of chess is as a theorist.  All his works were written in French and they fall into three categories:
(1)    Mathematical – Découvert sur le cavalier (aux échecs), St. Petersburg 1937 and three volumes, the Traité des applications de l’analyse mathématique au jeu des échecs (Treatise on the applications of mathematical analysis to the game of chess), St Petersburg 1862-3;
(2)    On the laws of chess – Régles du jeu des échecs adoptées par la Societé des amateurs d’échecs de St Petersbourg (Rules of the game of chess adopted by the Society of Chess Amateurs of St Petersburg), St Petersburg 1854 and a new compilation of the rules published four years later in St. Petersburg;
(3)    Openings – Analyse Nouvelle des Ouvertures du Jeu des Echecs, St Petersburg 1842-3.  This contained an analysis of the Wing Gambit and Petroff’s Defence.
With this book and Paul Rudolf von Bilguer’s Handbuch (1843), the development of modern opening play began.

Tutored by Petroff, Jaenisch never became a Master. He lost two matches: one to W. Hanstein in Berlin by +1-4=1 and another to Howard Staunton in London in 1851 by +2-7=1.  This second match was played after the great London event in 1851, in which Jaenisch had been expected to compete.