Erich Ernst Zepler

Erich Ernst Zepler, later Eric Ernest Zepler (born January 27, 1898 in Herford, † May 13, 1980 in Southampton) was a German-English physicist and chess composer of chess problems and endgame studies

Significant and famous chess composer

Life
Erich Zepler was a son of the doctor Martin Zepler, who died in Berlin in 1939, and Flora Guttfreund, who fell victim to the Holocaust in the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943. His brother Hans Zepler managed to escape from National Socialist Germany and became a doctor in the USA.

Zepler studied physics in Berlin and Bonn and received his doctorate in Würzburg. In 1917/18 he was a soldier in the First World War. He continued his research in Würzburg and went to the Telefunken company in Berlin in 1925. He married Eleonore Fischer in 1926 and they had two children. Zepler became head of the Institute for Radio Receivers, but as a Jew he was forced to flee Germany with his family in 1935 because of anti-Semitic discrimination.

He came to England and got a job with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. In 1941 he was briefly interned as an enemy alien. From 1941 to 1943 he taught at University College, Southampton (from 1952 University of Southampton), and then moved to the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. In 1947 he founded one of the world's first electronics departments at University College, Southampton, and in 1949 a chair was created for him there. The department is now located in the Zepler Building named after him. He helped to establish electronics as an independent branch of engineering. After his first retirement in 1963, he began researching hearing problems and was able to contribute to the understanding of the auditory response to impulses. In 1977 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Science.

Contributions to problem chess
As an important representative of the New German School of Chess Problems, Zepler mainly created three- and moremover chess problems as well as some endgame studies.

In 1957 he became International Arbiter for Chess Compositions and in 1973 International Master for Chess Composition. The Zepler-Turton combination is named after him (see Henry Turton#The Turton Theme).

Together with the German Ado Kraemer, Zepler composed chess problems and published books for decades. The “close personal connection”remained during the National Socialist era despite Zepler's emigration and Kraemer's membership in the SA, NSDAP and SS. In 1952 they both became honorary members of the problem chess association Die Schwalbe. Wolfgang Dittmann later wrote about the double honor that they were “commonly regarded as the two greatest living composers of the New German School at the time [… and] passionate advocates of the view of the artistic nature of the chess problem”

literature
Erich E. Zepler: The Technique of Radio Design. Wiley, New York NY 1943.
Ado Kraemer, Erich Zepler: Under the spell of the chess problem. Selected chess compositions. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1951 (3rd edition. ibid. 1982, ISBN 3-11-008104-0).
Ado Kraemer, Erich Zepler: Problem art in the 20th century. Selected chess tasks. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1957.
David Hooper, Kenneth Whyld: Erich Ernest Zepler. In: David Hooper, Kenneth Whyld: The Oxford Companion to Chess. 2nd edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 1996, ISBN 0-19-280049-3.
Zepler, Erich Ernst, in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983, p. 1277
Web links
Literature by and about Erich Zepler in the German National Library catalog
Zepler.net from the University of Southampton, Department of Electronics and Computer Science
Tim Krabbé: Open Chess Diary No. 89, January 20, 2001: Friends
Compositions by Erich Zepler on the Schwalbe PDB server

Individual evidence
  Introduction from autumn 1951 to Under the Spell of the Chess Problem, page 6 by Erich Zepler and Ado Kraemer
  Wolfgang Dittmann: The Flight of the Swallow. Published by Die Schwalbe, Wegberg 1988. P. 47

Source: Germain Wikipedia

Others: On Website ARVES is written: 

In EG 209 (magazine for chess studies) Alain Pallier has written an extensive article about him.

10 endgame studies, one of them is quite famous are selected on Website ARVES.org (Selection made by Peter Siegfried Krug)