Walther Freiherr von Holzhausen

From Holzhausen (1935)

Walther Freiherr von Holzhausen (born May 29, 1876 in Troppau ; † August 9, 1935 in Magdeburg ) was a strong chess player , but his main earnings are in chess composition .

Life

Von Holzhausen was born in 1876 as the son of an Austrian officer. He was an Austrian citizen, although his family lived in Frankfurt am Main . There he also attended high school . During his military service in Graz in 1895/96 , he developed a great passion for the military, which he also pursued in later life. In 1898 he became an Austrian reserve officer , but joined the Prussian army in 1900 and was initially a lieutenant in the infantry regiment "Hessen-Homburg" No. 166 in Hanau . He later moved to the Naumburg Cadet House , in which he worked as an educator and mathematics teacher. The activity as a teacher was by no means unusual.

Von Holzhausen had a natural talent for mathematical studies. It led to occupation with the checkers and from 1893 also with chess compositions. Before the beginning of the First World War in 1914 he was stationed in Trier and Frankfurt am Main.

During World War I was from Holzhausen battalion commander , was both on the West and on the Eastern Front wounded and fell while in Russian captivity . He managed to escape in the winter of 1917/18. It was immediately used again on the Western Front. After the war (1921) von Holzhausen came as Major a. D. to Magdeburg and worked in the Reich Archives. At this point he had been married for a year. His wife died in 1925 and von Holzhausen married a second time a few years later.

In 1935 von Holzhausen died at the age of 59 in Magdeburg after a brief, severe illness. His widow, Baroness M. von Holzhausen, dissolved her husband's chess library in November 1935 and looked for interested parties in the German chess sheets .

Captivity

During the First World War, von Holzhausen was taken prisoner by the Russians. In the prison camp in Khabarovsk on the Amur in eastern Siberia , he soon gathered a circle of chess friends around him. He worked as a chess teacher and even brought out a small hectographed chess newspaper, which was based almost exclusively on his own contributions and competitions for solutions. The newspaper, even if it was produced in tiny numbers, did its part to help the prisoners shorten the hard time in a stimulating way.

Von Holzhausen spent the involuntary leisure time in captivity with months of work to bring the work he began in 1908 on focal issues to a happy end. Since he had no written documents and not a single book, von Holzhausen had to rely solely on his amazing memory. Numerous tasks by other authors were taken into account in his manuscript .

In 1918 von Holzhausen escaped with another prisoner. In a city on the Volga , he entrusted the manuscript to a civilian prisoner of war there, so as not to expose himself to the risk of losing his laborious work on the risky border crossing to Finland . Crossing the border went unmolested - despite a severe Nordic winter and great physical exertion.

However, von Holzhausen never saw his manuscript and copies of the prisoner chess newspaper again, and they have remained lost. Despite all efforts, the fate of his confidante remained unclear. In 1926 von Holzhausen began the work again and published it in an expanded version.

Party chess

In 1893 von Holzhausen turned to the game of chess. In 1898 and 1899 he won first prize in the winter tournament of the Leipzig chess club Augustea . The high playing strength of Holzhausens is documented among other things by his well-known short victory in 1912 in Frankfurt am Main over Tarrasch in just eleven moves. In the later years he took part in many of the main tournaments of the German Chess Federation and in other larger events. In Bad Oeynhausen in 1922 he was the fourth winner in the main group tournament; in the Wartburg tournament in 1924 he shared the 1st prize with the Berlin master Otto Wegemund . The big hit came a year later. In 1925 he won the main tournament at the German championship in Breslau and achieved the title of German champion. Together with Adolf Kramer , he published the book The 24th and 25th Congress of the German Chess Federation Breslau 1925, Magdeburg 1927 .

Chess composition

However, von Holzhausen gained far greater importance in chess composition. Through his work as a mediator and active composer, he was considered a leader and pioneering. Holzhausen composed numerous chess problems and studies . He also published two widely acclaimed books.

Von Holzhausen made his first attempts at composition as a high school student and had his works published in English chess columns. At the beginning of the 20th century he became one of the most zealous contributors to the Academic Chess Pages . His style was favorably influenced by Blumenthal's chess miniatures (1902/03); the book Das Indian Problem (1903) gave him the far greater impetus in his work . The founders of the so-called New German School , Johannes Kohtz and Carl Kockelkorn , encouraged him to further expand their teaching building, based on the famous study on The Indian Problem . In the German weekly chess 1908/09 then his 45-page published monograph about focus issues , which increased in 1926 in the second edition of a book three times the circumference. Von Holzhausen had a loyal friendship with his teacher Kohtz until his death in 1918. On Kohtz's 70th birthday in 1913, von Holzhausen paid tribute to his friend's personality and achievements in the German weekly chess game. It was to be Holzhausen's last work before the war began.

From 1925 to 1929 von Holzhausen was at the height of his creativity. In 1928 he had the focal problems followed by the second part under the name Logic and Purpose in the New German Chess Problem . Both books became standard works of the New German (or better: Logical) school.

From 1931 until his death in 1935 he was in charge of the problem chess column of the German Schachblätter magazine .

Walther Freiherr von Holzhausen
German chess sheets, 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

Mate in 3 moves

Solution:

1. Qd8 – f6! threatens 2. Qxc6 and mate. As soon as the black bishop leaves the long diagonal, 2. L (D) f3 exf3 3. D (L) xf3 mates. In the four other saves, the black bishop is intercepted on four squares on the diagonal by double attacks, whereby Black himself has to open the mate line through e4 – e3 in order to parry a threat of mate:
1.… Bc6 – b7 2. Qf6 – g7 (threatens 3. Qg2)
1.… h7 – h6 2. Qf6 – g6 (threatens 3. Qg2; 2. Qxc6 ?? stalemate) 1.… Bc6
– d5 2. Qf6 – g5 (threatens 3. Qg2)
1.… Bc6– a8 2. Qf6 – a1 (threatens 3. Kf2)
followed by 2.… e4 – e3 3. Queen mates the bishop .

Fonts

• Focus Problems: A Chess Study. 2nd edition, H. Hedewigs Nachf., Leipzig 1926.
• Logic and purity of purpose in the new German chess problem: A memorandum for the 25th anniversary of the "Indian problem" by Kohtz and Kockelkorn. Along with two other problem chess treatises. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and Leipzig 1928.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} German chess sheets. No. 17/1935, p. 255.
2. ^ German chess sheets. No. 22/1935, p. 347.
3. ↑ Deutsche Schachblätter No. 18/1935, p. 281 - also Magdeburgische Zeitung of August 31, 1935.
4. ^ German chess sheets. No. 17/1935, p. 256 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walther Freiherr von Holzhausen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Compositions by Walther Freiherr von Holzhausen on the PDB server