Eduard Birgfeld

Eduard Adolf Heinrich Birgfeld (born September 12, 1887 in Hamburg , † May 7, 1939 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German chess composer , editor and official.

Life

Birgfeld's main direction were self-mating tasks. His book Fata Morgana, published in 1922, is famous with 950 train change tasks, 700 of which are original prints.

From 1924 to 1928 he was in charge of the chess column in the Chemnitzer Tageblatt , which overtook comparable sections in other newspapers with its wealth and content. A fillet was the reports written by Wolfgang Pauly about air travel around the world under the heading Problematicus as Globetrotter , to which corresponding chess compositions from the regions visited were attached. The blossoming of this chess column was undoubtedly inextricably linked with Birgfeld's restless activities in establishing contacts with chess composers all over the world.

Francisco Benkö reports: I still remember today that Dr. Birgfeld, a very personable gentleman who lived in Meißen, came to Berlin several times for a swallow evening. I especially remember when he once showed his famous self-matte four-move with the white king's run. I believe this problem is reprinted in the book Fata-Morgana, a book I never saw and would have liked to buy. However, Benkö was wrong about the reprint.

Since 1926 Birgfeld tried to found and build up an international association for chess composers and from 1928 was the first president of the IPB (International Problem Board), an international association, still entirely on a private level and without any support in the major national chess organizations. As such, the IPB survived the decades until it was officially replaced in Wiesbaden in 1959 by the Standing Commission for Chess Composition founded three years earlier .

From 1928 to 1939 Birgfeld was chairman of the Schwalbe Association . Under his leadership and through his persistent work, the existence and continued existence of this association was secured for the first time, not only through voluntary financial support, but above all through permanent membership recruitment.

Eduard Birgfeld
collector 1918

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

Self-mate in 4 moves

Solution:
1. Kh5 – g6 Ka6xb6
2. Kg6 – f5 + Kb6 – c5
3. Kf5 – g4 + Kc5 – d4
4. Kg4 – h5 + Ne2 – f4 mate

Private

Birgfeld worked as a senior physician in Chemnitz and was appointed head of the municipal hospital in Meißen at the end of 1928 . His grave is in the Hamburg family crypt in the Ohlsdorf cemetery (grid square AA 23).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Swallow prehistoric rock discovered . In: Die Schwalbe , Issue 226, August 2007, pp. 175–177 ( online version )
2. ↑ Wolfgang Dittmann: The flight of the swallow , Wegberg, 1988, p. 28

Works

• Birgfeld, Eduard: Modern composition of ideas in self-matt. Self-published, Chemnitz, 1921
• Birgfeld, Eduard: Fata Morgana. A study of the move change in Selbstmatt. Stein, Berlin-Halensee, 1922
• Birgfeld, Eduard: For the representation of logical combinations. In: Schachkongress Teplitz-Schönau: in October 1922. Teplitz-Schönau, 1923, pp. 391–414
• Kuhn, Winfried E .; Murkisch, Godehard: Schach des Chemnitzer Tageblattes December 21 , 1924 - October 28 , 1928 , Kuhn-Murkisch series No. 27, 1998

Web links

• Compositions by Eduard Birgfeld on the PDB server
• 90 years of chess composition in Chemnitz (with picture) (PDF; 1.9 MB)