Ernst Krieger (chess composer)

Franz Heinrich Ernst Krieger (* 8. June 1867 in Wolfenstein ; † 22. April 1943 in Landau , artist: PA Orlimont ) was a German composer in chess .

Life

Ernst Krieger was the only son of Gustav Adolph Krieger and his wife Katharina. He spent his childhood in Kirchheimbolanden . He passed his Abitur in 1886 in Zweibrücken . His classmates called him Plato minor (The Lesser Plato ) because of his intelligence . As an anagram of it he later formed the stage name PA Orlimont .

He studied law in Munich and Heidelberg . In 1895 he became a lawyer in Frankenthal . In 1897 he married Elisabetha Ballreich, with whom he had the son Urban Wolf (* 1899; † 1988). He came to Zweibrücken in November 1923 via several professional intermediate stops and stayed there until shortly before his death. There he was an active member of the chess club . Krieger died of old age in a nursing home in Landau in 1943.

Chess composition

Already during his school days he occupied himself with chess composition under the influence of Adolf Bayersdorfer . He published his first assignment in 1886 in the Leipziger Tageblatt newspaper . Between 1900 and 1914 he used the pseudonym R. Frieder , then always PA Orlimont . In 1905 he published an essay on all sorts of art laws in the magazine Deutsches Wochenschach . He is considered a representative of the so-called New German School , in which the economic, purely purposeful representation of logical ideas mattered. In total he published over 500 tasks in chess magazines and daily newspapers, mostly mating in 3 or more moves.

A motif that he first depicted in 1907 and later often varied is the so-called mousetrap :

PA Orlimont

	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

Mate in 3 moves

Solution : 1. Qc5 – f5 Rc4xc6 2. Qf5 – c5 Rc6xc5 (other rook moves are followed by 3. Qc5 – c2 #, after bishop moves 3. Qc5 – a5 #) 3. Na6xc5 #

The lady opens the mousetrap for the black rook on the first move and lets it snap shut again on the second move.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Weißauer : Das Pfälzer Dreigestirn ( Memento from November 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Club newspaper of the chess club SV Fischbach 1994

literature

• Erich Zepler (ed.): Gemstones of problem art from PA Orlimont's little treasure chest . PA Orlimont Verlag, Kaiserslautern 1965.
• Hermann Weißauer: PA Orlimont and his chess problems. Life, work and impact of the PA Orlimont . Edited by Winfried E. Kuhn and Godehard Murkisch. 2nd improved and greatly expanded edition. Nightrider Unlimited, Treuenhagen 1999, ISBN 3-9806906-0-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Krieger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Compositions by Ernst Krieger on the PDB server