Uhlmann's father taught him the game at the age of 11 at their home in Dresden and he progressed to the title of German Youth Champion in 1951. He learned the trade of letterpress printing, but his career in chess prevented him from practicing it. By 1956 he was an International Master, and by 1959 a Grandmaster. He quickly established himself as the dominant force in East German chess, winning the German Democratic Republicnational championship 11 times from 1954 to 1986. He was the GDR's most outstanding player at the Chess Olympiads of 1956–1990, where he made 11 appearances, mostly on. At the 1964 event in Tel Aviv, he scored 83.3 percent, earning him the individual board one gold medal. An individual bronze medal followed in 1966 at Havana. His most successful attempt at World Championship qualification occurred at the Palma de MallorcaInterzonal of 1970, where he tied for fifth and sixth place and reached the Candidates Matches the following year. But his quarter-final match with Bent Larsen in Las Palmas ended in disappointment, a 5½–3½ victory for Larsen, and Uhlmann was not able to come so close again. During the 1960s, Uhlmann performed well in international tournaments. He shared victory at Sarajevo 1964, tied for first at Havana 1964, tied for first at Zagreb 1965, tied for first at Hastings 1965/66, tied for first at Szombathely 1966, tied for first at Zinnowitz 1967 and tied for first with Bronstein at the Berlin 'Lasker Memorial' in 1968. At Raach in 1969, a zonal tournament, he finished two points clear of a field which included Lajos Portisch. He also enjoyed some success in the 1970s and 1980s. He tied for first with Bronstein and Vlastimil Hort at Hastings 1975/76, placed second behind Anatoly Karpov at Skopje 1976, finished first at Vrbas 1977, tied for first with Farago and Rainer Knaak at Halle 1978, and was an outright winner at Halle 1981. In 2012, age 77, Uhlmann was a member of the "Old Hands" group of senior previous top players who played the "Snowdrops", a group of talented young females, in a display match. The game Kashlinskaya–Uhlmann was considered the most beautiful of the event, with Uhlmann's play recalling the young Mikhail Tal.
Legacy
Uhlmann is acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on the French Defence, having refined and improved many of its variations and written books on the opening. He is one of very few grandmasters to have deployed the French almost exclusively in reply to 1.e4.
