Emil Joseph Diemer

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Emil Joseph Diemer

Emil Joseph Diemer (born May 15, 1908 in Radolfzell ; † October 10, 1990 in Fußbach / Gengenbach ) was a German chess player and author. Diemer often wrote his middle name Josef .

Although he was mainly active in southern Germany and was unable to win any major international tournaments, he achieved a certain popularity through the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, which he propagated under the motto "from the first move on mate " . He also played correspondence chess and in 1950 reported on the correspondence chess meeting in Kelheim an der Donau .

Life

Childhood and youth

He was the son of the post office clerk Emil Ludwig Otto Diemer and his wife Sophie. He was a sickly but inquisitive child. He learned to play chess at the age of nine from a school friend at the Gymnasialkonvikt in Rastatt . In January 1926, his mother, whom he loved, died. After graduating from high school in Baden-Baden at the age of 19 , he completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller at the Herder publishing house in Freiburg im Breisgau . In early 1931 he became unemployed and decided to devote himself entirely to chess.

Success as a chess player

Diemer won several smaller tournaments, such as the side tournament (Major A) in Hastings in 1935 and 1936 . He played for the Freiburg chess club in the final of the German team championship 1950 in Berlin on the third board. In 1951 he won the Upper Swabian Championship and the 5th South Baden Championship, the Swiss national tournament in 1952, the Baden Cup tournament in 1953, two tournaments in 1956 in the Netherlands and 1957 in Zwolle.

In the more crowded tournaments, however, he could not achieve any successes worth mentioning. So he finished last at a double-round four-master tournament in Brussels in 1936 with 1.5 points from 6 games.

Diemer as an author and journalist

He wrote several tournament books for the Hungarian Magyar Sakkvilág :

At these and other tournaments (both at home and abroad) Diemer was present as a reporter and wrote reports for chess magazines and chess columns he edited in daily newspapers.

Diemer and National Socialism

Diemer was a member of the NSDAP from September 24, 1931 . Due to this fact, he broke with his Christian-conservative father. Until 1945 Diemer earned his living mainly from the distribution of Nazi publications. He volunteered for the Wehrmacht, but was not accepted because he was “unsuitable”. He expressed himself anti-Semitic in an essay Schach - Kampf und Kunst , published in 1943 in the Deutsche Schachzeitung , in which - like Franz Gutmayer before him - he differentiated “lame and cowardly Jewish chess” from “German combat chess”. Even Ehrhardt Post , the federal manager of the Greater German Chess Federation , went too far. Post feared damage to its reputation abroad and therefore criticized Diemer's statements in March 1943 in the Deutsche Schachbl Blätter . The discussion ended when in 1943 all German chess magazines were merged to form the Deutsche Schachzeitung , headed by Ludwig Rellstab .

The Diemer affair in 1953

In the post-war period , Diemer experienced his most successful period in terms of chess. However, this was overshadowed by the so-called "Diemer Affair". In 1952 and 1953, Diemer personally attacked several functionaries of the German Chess Federation in letters that he wrote on official letterhead in his function as press officer of the Badischer Schachverband. In particular, he clashed with Alfred Brinckmann , who was the private secretary of DSB President Emil Dähne at the time. Diemer accused Brinckmann (inter alia) of his "tendency to have closer contacts with the same sex" and "generous use" of funds from the chess federation. This led to Diemer's expulsion from the German Chess Federation in 1953 and also to her expulsion from the Baden Chess Federation on December 5, 1953. Therefore the playoff with Rudolf Kraus for participation in the All-German Championship in Leipzig, which should have taken place after the qualification tournament in Varnhalt, was canceled. As a result of this affair, the entire board of the DSB (with the exception of two members) resigned in 1953, which meant that it was no longer formally capable of acting. Diemer called his exclusion a "crime". The exclusion from the DSB did not prevent Diemer's participation in international chess events. In October 1956 he finished second in the Swiss Chess Championship in Thun in 1956 .

Occupation with esotericism

After the war , Diemer turned increasingly to esoteric topics, in particular numerology , reincarnation theory , biorhythms and the prophecies of Nostradamus . As an example of his unconventional views is the one letter mirror called vaunted "Energlut Brain direct food" attributed in the Diemer his temporary chess winning streak to him as a "magic bullet" - a product over which the magazine had earlier reported.

Jan Hein Donner jokingly characterized Diemer - with regard to his personality and chess work - as early as 1958 as the "Prophet of Muggensturm".

Last years

In October 1964 he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. From 1971 he was active again at the local level. In 1973 he played at the Rilton Cup in Stockholm , but did not get one of the top places. There he answered 1. Ng1 – f3 with 1.… f7 – f6 in the game against the Swedish player Pär Hammargren. Although he won, there were hardly any imitators for this eccentric opening idea. Diemer played his last tournament role in 1985. In the same year, Europa-Rochade published an essay by Diemers on the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, in which he stated, among other things, that as a schoolboy he had “an extremely bad memory”. According to Studier's statement, however, Diemer had a “photographic memory” in some areas.

Diemer died of natural causes on the morning of October 10, 1990 at his last place of residence in Fußbach . Since then until 2007 was a year in the village a Blackmar Diemer Gambit- theme tournament as a memorial tournament for Diemer place until it was discontinued due to organizational reasons.

Works and literature

  • EJ Diemer: 56 times world champion chess . Magyar Sakkvilág, Kecskemét (Hungary)
  • Emil Josef Diemer: The Modern Blackmar Diemer Gambit, Volume 1 4th Edition. Heidelberg 1983.
  • Georg Studier: Emil Joseph Diemer, a life for chess as reflected in its time . Dresden 1996. ISBN 3-925691-18-9 .
  • Dany Sénéchaud: Emil Diemer (1908–1990), missionnaire des échecs acrobatiques . France, 3rd ed., 2003

Web links

Individual references and sources

  1. ^ German correspondence chess meeting 1950 in Kelheim an der Donau on TeleSchess (report and photo by EJ Diemer, as well as group picture and games)
  2. ↑ a b Michael Negele : Emil Joseph Diemer, a zealot between delusion and truth . In: KARL, the cultural chess magazine , No. 1/2007, pp. 28–36, there based on Georg Studier and Werner Lauterbach , among others
  3. ↑ Georg Studier: Emil Joseph Diemer, a life for chess in the mirror of its time. Dresden 1996. ISBN 3-925691-18-9 .
  4. ^ Emil Josef Diemer: Letter to the Editor, in: Der Spiegel, No. 1/1957, January 2, 1957, p. 7.
  5. ↑ Jan Hein Donner in “de Tijd”. February 15, 1958
  6. ^ Comment from Jesper Hall : Tore och turneringen. Histories of the Rilton Cup . Göteborg 2007. ISBN 978-91-85779-97-0 , pp. 50-52.
personal data
SURNAME Diemer, Emil Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diemer, Emil Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chess player
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Radolfzell
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1990
Place of death Fußbach (Gengenbach) , Gengenbach