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| - Bohnenspiel → German, Italian. Already in 1916, the Bohnenspiel (Bean Game) was called "an old German game" by the game pastor Fritz Jahn (1863-1931) who rediscovered it in 1908 while visiting Baron Viktor von Stackelberg at his estate in Kardis (Island of Ösel), Estonia. The baron owned a replica of the famous mancala set which was a gift from the Shah of Persia (probably Aga Mohammed) to Czarina Catherine the Great (reign 1762-1796), born Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst. The original is to this day kept in the art collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Like all German nobles the Stackelbergs who owned the estate since 1532 were expropriated by the Estonian government in 1919. The game was mostly played by the German aristocracy in the Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire in the 19th century and, for that reason, named Baltisches Bohnenspiel ("Baltic Bean Game") or Kardis-Bohnenspiel ("Kardis Bean Game"). In the eastern provinces of Prussia which are since the end of World War II occupied by Poland and Russia, a variant was played on a larger 2x9 board which was called Deutsches Bohnenspiel ("German Bean Game"), but its exact rules are now forgotten. Das Deutsche Bohnenspiel was very popular in the 1880s according to the wife of Wilhelm Hans August von Waldow (1856-1937), Governing President of Königsberg (1899-1903) and the Senior President of Pommern (1911-1917) in Stettin. Bohnenspiel has the same rules as the classic Turkish Mangala, which appears to have been called Manqalat or Manqala in Persia. Any similarity of the Bohnenspiel to African games, such as Ouré (played by the Wolof in Senegal), appears to be a mere coincidence, when its place and time of origin is considered. The game spread from Petersburg to the Baltic countries, from there to Prussia and later to other German states and eventually to German-speaking countries in the south such as Switzerland and Austria. Pastor Fritz Jahn lived in Züllchow, a suburb of Stettin, where he was director of the Züllchower Anstalten, a Lutheran brotherhood which created a pedagogical institute and a children's home. He used the game for the education of children and workers and promoted it in many books and speeches. Other games he liked were Domino and Cribbage. Later the game was described by August Meikop in the Estonian youth magazine "Eesti Noorus" in 1932 and then by Bruno Arbeiter in the Deutsche Spielhandbuch (Handbook of German Games) in 1937. The oldest surviving game dates back to 1962. The game was quite popular in the socialist worker and peasant state DDR (German Democratic Republic), where it was sold as Badari and suggestions were made to make a board from egg shelves. It appears that the Bohnenspiel is still more popular in the eastern part of Germany than in the west or south. Malters Langenegger, a Swiss, has put a free Bohnenspiel program on his homepage where you can play online. His program is quite good. The same program can also be found on many websites in Germany. The Bohnenspiel is also played in Kazakhstan, Central Asia. Several tricky endgame problems were composed by Maksat Shotayev, a well-known Toguz Kumalak player. He even organizes seminars in which he teaches Bohnenspiel and Omweso. The first international Bohnenspiel tournament was held on July 19, 2012, in Pardubice (Czech Republic). There were eight players from the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland and Kazakhstan in the competition, which was won by Maksat Shotayev. Another tournament was held on April 5, 2013 in Nürnberg (Germany). It had 12 players, which were from Cameroon, Ethiopia, Germany, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Somalia, and Uganda. The competition was won by Ralf Gering who lost not a single game out of five. More tournaments were played in 2013 in Sinzig and Bad Breisig. The game can be played online on igGameCenter, a special online game gadget that allows playing abstract board games with other opponents in real-time, since October 12, 2008.
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