High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Curt von Bardeleben (Berlin, 4 March 1861 - Berlin, 31 January 1924) was a Count and a German chess master who committed suicide by jumping out of a window in 1924. His life and death were the basis for that of the main character in the novel The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov, which was made into the movie The Luzhin Defence. He edited the magazine Deutsche Schachzeitung from 1887 through 1891.