In 1977, Donner wrote in Schaakbulletin: "Just having turned sixteen, I had been sent to the countryside to feed up a little. There was this girl, too. At our first acquaintance, she lifted her skirt and asked if she had beautiful legs. A future great artist would have reacted differently - Goethe, Wagner, Mulisch (a Dutch writer and a friend of Donner's - TK), but I was paralysed with fright. I did in fact become a chess player, just having mastered the art at that point.

That weekend, she turned out to be God's daughter, as well. 

In unfathomable goodness he granted me a game. A Slav opening, he won the endgame." 
Being a true chess player, Donner was probably more excited about the fact that the girl's father was the former World Chess Champion Max Euwe, and the dream of perhaps being able to play Him a game, than about her legs. In those years, it was unimaginable for a schoolboy to challenge a grown-up, but when Euwe arrived, the prominence of Donner's father (a former Minister of Justice and a member of the High Court) assured that the families would have tea together, and when the ever obliging Euwe was told of the boy's chess love, he suggested playing a game after dinner.

Donner - Euwe, Winterswijk 1943

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4

5.a4 Bf5 6.Ne5 e6 7.f3 Bb4

8.Bg5 c5 9.dxc5 Qxd1+ 10.Rxd1 Nd5

11.e4 f6 12.exd5 exd5 13.Rxd5 fxg5

(see diagram) 
14.Bxc4 Black's opening has

gone wrong; with 14.Nxc4 White would have

obtained good chances.

Now he was gradually put on the defensive. 

14...Be6 15.Rd1 Bxc4 16.Nxc4 O-O

17.O-O Bxc5+ 

18.Kh1 Nc6 19.Ne4 Be7 20.Rd7 Rab8

21.Na5 Nxa5 

22.Rxe7 g4 23.Rd1 Rbd8

24.Rdd7 Rxd7 

25.Rxd7 Rc8 26.Kg1 gxf3 27.gxf3 Rc1+

28.Kg2 Rc2+ 29.Rd2 Rxd2+ 

30.Nxd2 Kf7 31.Kf2 Ke6

32.Ke3 Kd5 33.Kd3 Nc6 

34.b3 Nd4 35.h4 Nf5 36.h5 Ng3

37.h6 gxh6 

38.f4 h5 39.Ke3 Nf5+

40.Kf3 Kd4 and White resigned. 

The game, played without a clock, had lasted an hour.

A very good game for a boy who had just been playing for two years, and Euwe praised his talent. In a novel about two chessplayers, this would be a decisive moment in the lives of both: the schoolboy suddenly realising his calling in life, the great man feeling guilty about the boy's social downfall, because Hein Donner had been cut out for something different than the bohemian and, in those years, destitute life of a professional chessplayer. (In the fifties, Donner was the only member on the Dutch teams who wasn't paid. The others, holding jobs, were compensated for their loss of income - he had nothing to be compensated for.)

Some time ago, to the disbelief of some readers, I mentioned that in Amsterdam, you can cross the Hein Donner bridge to reach the Max Euwe square. (See item 84 in this Diary.) It's something these two, who were for a long time Holland's only two grandmasters, could not have imagined when they first met in a family hotel in a provincial town in the East of the Netherlands, in 1943.
    Reality did somehow resemble this scenario