His life story encompasses words like pioneer, anti-Semitism, revolution, world champion, migrant, and outcast. All of this has made him a pop culture icon and a man about whom all the stories will never be told.
You may not know chess grandmasters, but it’s impossible not to have heard of Robert “Bobby” Fischer.
He returned to the public eye after the release of the series “Queen’s Gambit” in which the character of the protagonist was based on him.
He was a world champion (the first American in history to do so), won the US Open eight times, and the first time at just 14 years old. In 1964, he managed to win the final 11-0, which happened only once in history.
Fischer’s Arrival in Yugoslavia
He was in Belgrade to face Dragoljub Janošević and Milan Matulović in 1958, but his visit to Belgrade in 1992 would be much more famous. He came to challenge Boris Spassky, which was presented as a confrontation between the USA and the USSR in the midst of the Cold War, making it perhaps the only chess match ever broadcast in prime time around the world.
In 1992, he first arrived in Sveti Stefan, and then from there to Belgrade where he played an unofficial rematch after withdrawing from the public eye 17 years earlier. Because of his visit to play against Spassky in Belgrade in 1992, a warrant was issued for his arrest in the US. Namely, Yugoslavia was then under a United Nations embargo. From that moment on, he began to live as an emigrant, and then in 2004 he was arrested in Japan. He was arrested for using a passport that had been withdrawn from use by the US government. In the end, he accepted Icelandic citizenship, which the state did expeditiously by special act, and allowed him to live there until his death in 2008.
It will also be remembered when he spat on a letter sent to him by the US government.
Many things marked his life, so it is little known that he secretly spent months in Yugoslavia after that rematch with Spassky (it was always considered an unofficial match).
He was in the Junaković and Kanjiža spas (he spent half a year there), and only a few people knew about it.
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The secrets left in a Serbian SPA
Years later, the director of the Kanjiža spa, Dr. Ferenc Agošton, decided to reveal some secrets from that period.
“He came to us to heal, rest, and be in asylum. There was a warrant out for his arrest in America, because of the match in Yugoslavia with which he violated tax laws and sanctions against our country. Besides, he, although a Jew, was an outspoken anti-Semite and made extreme statements, which caused him great problems.”
He also explained what his stay in the spa was like.
“He improved his health with us, but it seems to me that he also recovered psychologically. In my opinion, he had serious psychological problems. For some, he was a genius, and for others, a madman. I would describe him as an oddball. I had the impression that he was afraid of everything, both real and unreal things. He lived on the first floor, in apartment 219, while his bodyguards and personal secretary stayed in the neighboring rooms. Fischer demanded that the secretary keep the door ajar 24 hours a day, as he was afraid that someone would attack him. He had a small kitchen with a bar, a living room, and a bedroom with a separate toilet and bathroom. They would go in the middle of the night to Horgoš, which is 15 kilometers away. They would walk about 30 kilometers almost every night! Or at least to Novi Kneževac, five kilometers from here. Besides that, he would swim in the pool for several hours. He was an athlete, large, developed. His shoe size was 48. He asked for special food, he loved to eat with a spoon: fish and tomato soup, but also a lot of fruits and vegetables. He drank liters of blueberry juice daily. Alcoholic beverages very rarely and little. We arranged for him to go to Senti, to a fish restaurant. And there he also asked for the tavern to be empty, only the musicians were allowed to stay,” Dr. Agošton once said, and it will be remembered that it was Svetozar Gligorić who brought the American to Yugoslavia.
Let’s go back to that famous match against Spassky, they played for the first time in 1972 from July to September, and Fischer won 12.5 to 8.5. The rematch in Sveti Stefan and Belgrade brought Fischer 10-5 with 15 draws. So it all came down to the rematch of the century being played in Yugoslavia.
The first encounter took place in 1972 when he defeated Spassky, who had been world champion from 1969 to 1972. The son of a Russian priest and politician and a teacher, he started playing chess at the age of five. There was great interest in this match around the world, and even Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, decided to call Fischer to persuade him to play.
It will also be remembered that Fischer refused to play until the “Chester Fox” cameras were removed because he was allegedly bothered by their buzzing. He did this even though he had agreed with that TV station that he and Spassky would split 30% of the proceeds.
In the end, Fischer managed to become world champion.
He died in Reykjavik after kidney failure at the age of 64 on January 17, 2008.
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Source: Nova.rs, Photo: AFP