Hans Vetter

Johannes Vetter (* 27 June 1894 in Dresden; † 13 April 1973 in Dresden) was a German chess composer, chess player and editor.

Chess composition
Together with Friedrich Palitzsch, Rudolf Leopold and Gerhard Kaiser, Hans Vetter was part of the Dresden Chess Club's quartet of composers. He published around 350 chess compositions and received 70 awards, including 12 first prizes and 22 other prizes. He became famous for some spectacular successes such as the first prize in the FIDE tournament in 1957.

Vetter founded the modern concept of the logical multiple move and found a happy synthesis of new German ideas with Bohemian construction techniques and their pattern mates in his compositions.Numerous chess composers, such as Hans Lepuschütz from Graz, referred to Vetter as their teacher. He was an international judge for chess composition from 1958 onwards.

Editor
Vetter took over as editor of the Unsere Schachecke section of the Sächsische Zeitung, which was founded by Gerhard Kaiser on 18 January 1958. His successor from 1973 to 1992 was Günter Schiller and after his death Frank Reinhold.

From 1965 until March 1973, Vetter edited the Problems and Studies section of the magazine Schach.

His life
Hans Vetter worked for over forty years as a commercial employee in a large brewery in Dresden. The family grave is located in the Dresden-Tolkewitz urn grove just a few steps away from the prominent gravestones of the two pioneers Johannes Kohtz and Friedrich Palitzsch.

In 2008, he was posthumously made an honorary member of the Dresden Chess Federation.

Tournament player
In 1923 he came second in the Leipzig Saxon Championship Tournament and placed 6th in the Frankfurt Main Tournament. In 1926 he came second in the Saxon Championship Tournament in Dresden. In 1949, he was a member of the Dresden team at the 4-City Tournament in Leipzig alongside Lothar Schmid and Edith Keller, among others, which finished second behind Berlin.

He remained loyal to his club Aufbau Dresden-Mitte (1950-52 as Bau-Union Süd) until 1972. Between 1954 and 1958, Vetter played on boards 3 to 6 in the GDR league and scored 30 points from 60 games. The team was promoted to the top division in 1954 and finished runners-up to SC Wissenschaft Halle in 1955.

Individual references
 In memoriam Hans Vetter, Chess, issue 6, 1973, p. 186
 Fritz Hoffmann; Günter Schiller; Karl-Heinz Siehndel; Manfred Zucker: 407 tasks and studies. Sportverlag, Berlin, 1984, p. 75. ISBN 3-88805-350-1
 Klug, Helmut: Hans Vetter 75 years, Freie Presse, 27 June 1969
 International judges for chess compositions
 Chess, issue 4, 1973, p. 123
 Honorary members of the Dresden Chess Federation
 Hofmann, Peter; Krämer, Hans-Winfried: Dresdner Schachbund honours long-standing merits. in: Rochade Sachsen, 03/2009, p. 4
Weblinks
Compositions by Hans Vetter (chess player) on the Schwalbe PDB server