London's Brompton Cemetery is home to the tombstone of the brilliant Polish chess player, participant in the first world title match, Jan Herman Zukertort. The initiators of the restoration of the tombstone have repeated "Polish" and "Polish" several times in the short inscription, not without reason.

Brompton Cemetery-Garden in London - history of its creation

The cemetery in the London Borough of Brompton continues to serve as a burial ground, and whether [one intends] to go for a walk, have a coffee or just sit in silence , the site's managers write, it is the perfect place to escape the hustle and bustle of west London . And it is hardly surprising, as it was designed as a cemetery-garden.

The necropolis had to be large, because already in the early 19th century the number of Londoners exceeded one million and the small church cemeteries were filling up. Besides, the capital of the British Empire was facing epidemics and the authorities decided to prepare for more. In 1832, the decision was taken to build seven large private cemeteries on the outskirts of London and they were immediately dubbed the 'seven great ones'. One of these was to become a 16-acre site in the west of the city, just at Brompton.

Benjamin Baud was the chief architect, and it is to him that London owes its necropolis, inspired by St Peter's Square in the Vatican, with its sandstone chapel and symmetrical colonnades; this was to give the impression of a great cathedral in the open air. The vegetation was planned just as thoughtfully. Cypresses were planted along the paths, the walls were covered with ivy and pine trees imported from Poland were used as special dendrological ornaments.

Polish graves in Brompton Cemetery

The cemetery opened in 1840 and soon the gloomy scenarios were confirmed and the number of burials steadily increased, mainly due to epidemics, including cholera, which decimated nearby Soho in 1854. Decades passed and the necropolis filled up.

Among the tombstones, the graves of Poles occupy an important place. Many of their compatriots, who were sent to Great Britain during the Second World War, remained in London after demobilisation and settled in Brompton, among other places, and later found eternal rest in this necropolis, under trees brought from their homeland.

Many former senior Polish commanders or politicians, after the war, in exile, had to take up tailoring (such as General Zygmunt Podhorski, 1891-1960) or beekeeping (such as General Stefan Dąb-Biernacki, 1890-1959). Also buried in the cemetery were people associated with the Polish authorities in exile, such as Prime Minister Tomasz Arciszewski (1877-1955). The number of Polish graves was increasing. Today, among the 200,000 burials there are more than 300 Polish ones, mostly from the second half of the 20th century. However, researchers point out that the first Polish tombstone appeared in the Brompton necropolis as early as 1888, and - although it does not conceal the ashes of a military man or politician - for chess players it is the most important point in the cemetery.

Jan Zukertort - one of the first Poles to be buried in Brompton

The gravestone of Jan Herman Zukertort (1842-1888), an eminent Polish chess player and world champion contender, consisted of a horizontal, gabled slab, with a gable running through the centres of the shorter sides.

It was still in good condition in 1927, and the English inscription "In memory of J.H. Zukertort, chess champion, born 7 Sept. 1844, died 20 Jun. 1888" remained visible. But as early as 1951, chess player Harold Lommer struggled to find it and described it as "neglected and overgrown with weeds".

Almost half a century passed and the search was undertaken by the authors of what is now the only Polish biography of Zukertort, Cezary W. Domański and Tomasz Lissowski. In 1997, they approached the president of the Polish Heritage Society, Marek Stella-Sawicki, who identified the site of the grave and marked it with stakes; the original slab had already sunk into the ground and overgrown with grass.

More years passed and in March 2011, English chess grandmaster Stuart Conquest visited Brompton Cemetery. While browsing the internet, he found out that Zukertort was resting there. During his visit to the cemetery, he decided to dig up and restore the grave. He obtained permission and arrived a month later with a shovel. In his account he recorded: A hot day, people are sunbathing in the cemetery. [... ] I dig. After a while the shovel hits something hard. [... ] I feel a cool object underneath. It is a stone slab.

Jan Zukertort - the most outstanding Polish sportsman of the 19th century.

Conquest made contact with Stella-Sawicki. It turned out that the president of the Polish Heritage Society was already considering an expensive and complicated exhumation and transfer of the ashes to the country. However, nothing stood in the way of joint efforts to restore the grave.

A collection was announced among Polish and English chess players, with the organisation represented by Stella-Sawicki donating a significant portion of the funds. On the eve of the opening of the 2012. XXX Summer Olympic Games in London, the action was successful.

The original grave slab was raised, cleaned and protected and a stone stele with a bilingual inscription was added. The information about the date and place of Zukertort's birth and death is preceded by an apostrophe, which in the Polish version reads "Grandmaster from Lublin" and is a reference not only to the city on the Bystrzyca River or chess virtuosity (in Zukertort's time the nomenclature Grandmaster was not used), but also to Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel, The Magician of Lublin . A laudation is included below:

One of the most eminent chess players of all time / participant in the first chess world championship match / the most outstanding Polish sportsman of the 19th century / in honour of his memory .

On the other side of the stele are chess figures arranged in a position of strength, from pawn to king. It is customary to assign points to each of them, except for the king, who cannot be beaten and therefore cannot be assessed. Thus, at the end of this seemingly trivial arrangement, infinity and eternity resound.

Polish metric of the 'grandmaster from Lublin'

On 26 June 2012, during the unveiling of the restored grave, all those involved in the undertaking were present, as well as the Catholic and Evangelical-Augsburg clergy, representatives of the Polish embassy, journalists and, of course, chess players. The flora and fauna of Brompton were exuberant, Chelsea Stadium peeked out from behind the wall and the surrounding London was alive with the imminent inauguration of the Games. It could hardly be a more worthy celebration.

Nevertheless, there is something we could also do for this chess genius, who was born in Lublin, then lived in Wrocław (Breslau) for a decade and spoke fluent Polish until his last days. Let's take a look at Wikipedia. Most language versions of the biography, from Arabic to English to Turkish, call him a "Polish chess player". Unfortunately, the native version of this online encyclopaedia refers to him as a "Polish-German" player, which, according to Conquest, contradicts the position of the chess players themselves. Unfortunately, our neighbours do not see him as Polish either, and in the Ukrainian Wikipedia, among others, he is "German and English".

However, there is an opportunity to change this, as 7 September 2022 is the 180th anniversary of the birth of Jan Zukertort, the grandmaster from Lublin. Wikipedians - there is more than enough time - get down to your keyboards and change to 'Polish Chess Player', citizens of Lublin and Wrocław - perhaps a street is waiting for a patron: Zukertort would be perfect. There are more ideas to celebrate. It is worth remembering the most outstanding Polish sportsman of the 19th century.