11 Facts About Sonja Graf

Susanna "Sonja" Graf was a German and American chess player.

Sonja Graf was a women's world championship runner-up and a two-time US women's champion.

Sonja Graf's father was originally a priest in Russia, but moved to Munich to pursue life as a painter.

Sonja Graf later wrote that despite the suffering she endured at the hands of her father, she was grateful that he taught her the game of chess when she was still a child.

Sonja Graf began traveling throughout Europe, following the chess circuit both for the experience and to distance herself from what she considered the ominous National Socialist movement based, at the time, in Munich.

Sonja Graf lost both matches, but was invited, along with Menchik, to participate in what would normally have been an exclusive male tournament held that year in Prague.

Sonja Graf did not win against any of the champions, and her best result was a draw with the Estonian master Paul Keres.

In 1939, Sonja Graf traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina to play in the Women's World Chess Championship, held concurrently with the 8th Chess Olympiad.

Sonja Graf quickly learned the local Spanish language, assimilated herself in the culture and wrote the books, Asi juega una mujer, which describes her experiences as a chess player, and Yo Soy Susann, recounting the physical and psychological abuse she suffered during her childhood.

Sonja Graf met merchant mariner Vernon Stevenson, whom she married in 1947.

Sonja Graf retired from chess to give birth and raise her son Alexander, but subsequently returned to co-win the 1957 US Women's Chess Championship.