Alexander Wittek was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n architect and chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 master.

As an architect Wittek worked in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...

 during Austro-Hungarian Empire. His most famous works in Sarajevo

Sarajevo

Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....

 are the City Hall building called "Vijećnica

Vijećnica

The City Hall , the largest and most representative building of the Austro-Hungarian period in Sarajevo, was purpose-built as the headquarters of the city and authority....

"(1892–1894) (later it became the National Library) and the Sebilj

Sebilj

The Sebilj or as visitors frequently call it “the pigeon square”. The Sebilj is a pseudo-Moorish style wooden fountain in the centre of Baščaršija square in Sarajevo built by Mehmed-pasha Kukavica in 1753...

 public fountain (1891), both built in the pseudo-Moorish style

Moorish Revival

Moorish Revival or Neo-Moorish is one of the exotic revival architectural styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of the Romanticist fascination with all things oriental...

.

Wittek was also a Croatian-Austrian chess master. He tied for 5-6th at Berlin 1881 (2nd DSB–Congress, Joseph Henry Blackburne

Joseph Henry Blackburne

Joseph Henry Blackburne , nicknamed "The Black Death", dominated British chess during the latter part of the 19th century. He learned the game at the relatively late age of 18 but quickly became a strong player and went on to develop a professional chess career that spanned over 50 years...

 won), and took 9th at Vienna 1882 (Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...

 and Simon Winawer won). In 1882 he was ranked 9th in the world.

Wittek died in a lunatic asylum in Graz in 1894 having been diagnosed with a "paralytic mental disorder" the previous year. One source says that he committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

but another cites tuberculosis.

External links

• Alexander Wittek games of chess