Rixi Markus

Rika "Rixi" MarkusMBE (27 June 1910 – 4 April 1992) was an Austrian and British international contract bridge player. She won five world titles, and was the first woman to become a World Grand Master within the World Bridge Federation. "In a 60-year career", Alan Truscott wrote in a bridge column 15 weeks after her death, "she had far more victories with partners of assorted nationalities than anyone else has ever had." She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for contributions to bridge in 1974.

Life

Markus was born as Erika (Rixi) Scharfstein into a prosperous Austrian Jewish family in Gura Humorului, Bukovina. Now in Romania, Bukovina was a duchy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1775 to 1918.

In 1916, her family fled, ahead of the Russian advance, settling in Vienna. After finishing school in Dresden she returned to Vienna, where she first made her name at the bridge table. Married young, and disastrously, she devoted herself almost entirely to bridge.