Background and Early Life
Anderssen was born in Breslau (now called Wrocław), in the Prussian Province of Silesia, in 1818. He lived there for most of his life, sharing a house with and supporting his widowed mother and his unmarried sister. He never married. Anderssen graduated from the public gymnasium (high school) in Breslau and then attended university, where he studied mathematics and philosophy. After graduating in 1847 at the age of 29, he took a position at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium as an instructor and later as Professor of Mathematics. Anderssen lived a quiet, stable, responsible, respectable middle-class life. His career was teaching mathematics, while his hobby and passion was playing chess.
When Anderssen was nine years old, his father taught him how to play chess. Anderssen said that as a boy, he learned the strategy of the game from a copy of William Lewis' book Fifty Games between Labourdonnais and McDonnell (1835).
Read more about this topic: Adolf Anderssen
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