Werner Speckmann

Werner Speckmann (born August 21, 1913 in Dortmund; † February 23, 2001 in Hamm/Westphalia) was an important German chess composer and judge in civil cases.

Significant chess composer and writer of many very beautiful problem chess books                                                          Youth and training
Werner Speckmann learned to play chess at the age of 12 and came to art chess in 1929 through the Viennese magazine Das Puzzle and its editor Hans Schaffer. Speckmann's first chess problem (see below) appeared there on August 13, 1929.

Speckmann studied law at the universities in Bonn and Münster/Westphalia between 1933 and 1936. In 1937 he received his doctorate under the deanship of Max Kaser on the topic “The discretion of administrative authorities and its control by the highest administrative courts”.

Professional career
After his traineeship, he initially worked as a court assessor from 1939 and moved to the Reich Patent Office as a civil servant in 1942. After the war and his release from Soviet captivity, he became a judge in civil matters in 1946 and - after an interim assignment at the German Patent Office in Munich (1951 to 1953) - appointed senior judge at the Hamm Higher Regional Court in 1953. Until his retirement in 1976, he dealt particularly with questions of family and inheritance law; He was also a member of the judicial review office at the Hamm Higher Regional Court until 1968. Speckmann wrote two legal and legal policy treatises from 1952 to 1954 and another 32 from 1968 to 1974.

Personal
In 1947, Werner Speckmann married Irma Meyer zu Theenhausen (born January 7, 1921 in Theenhausen; † September 5, 2016 in Oldenburg).

Werner Speckmann died on February 23, 2001. In addition to his wife, he leaves behind two children, Susanne (* 1949) and Lothar (* 1958).

Chess composition
Following the early chess experiences of his childhood and youth, Speckmann was appointed International Arbiter for Chess Composition in 1959 and International Master of Chess Composition in 1967 (with a final score of 58.17 points). Speckmann was also a member of the British Chess Problem Society.

Werner Speckmann was editor from 1953 to 1962 and first chairman from 1969 until his resignation in 1982, then honorary chairman of Schwalbe (German association for problem chess founded in 1924). Speckmann demanded solution tournaments from FIDE, especially in the 1960s. On the initiative of Gerhard Wolfgang Jensch, he achieved the Schwalbe's acceptance into the German Chess Federation in 1972. He – represented by DSB President Egon Ditt – awarded Speckmann the “Golden Badge of Honor” on his 80th birthday in 1993. He was also awarded a “Golden Badge of Honor” by Schwalbe in 1995.

rom 1963 to 1988 Speckmann edited the composition section of the Deutsche Schachzeitung and continued to do so after the publication was merged with Schach-Report until 1991. Speckmann always helped to spread the word about chess composition. He answered detailed questions and supported new composers, such as Bernd Schwarzkopf.

From 1961 to 1982, Speckmann wrote several essays on chess composition for the Deutsche Schachzeitung. He also published several books. In particular, he wrote about the "New German School", which he also popularised in Russia. Speckmann also translated books from the Russian language, including Genrich Gasparjan's Magic of the Endgame. In 1999 he also published the first German Internet chess composition book (Speckmann, Ausgewählte Schachaufgaben). In the last years of his life, Speckmann revised his own earlier works.

Speckmann composed several thousand chess compositions, including 1718 miniatures (i.e. pieces with a maximum of seven pieces). It was above all his lively publishing activity in this context that made him famous beyond national borders. He invented several fairytale chess pieces, including the super pawn.

In memoriam

Dr. Werner Speckmann was born on August 21, 1913 in Dortmund.

He studied law between 1933 and 1936 at the universities in Bonn and Münster/Westphalia. In 1937 he received his doctorate from the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster under the deanship of Prof. Dr. Max Kaser with the topic "The discretion of the administrative authorities and its control by the highest administrative courts." After his traineeship, he worked as a court assessor in civil matters from 1939 and in 1942 he moved to the Reich Patent Office (trademark department) as an official. After the war and his release from Soviet captivity in 1945, he was employed in the judicial service again from 1946, initially as a commissioned judge at the district court in Hamm and from 1949 at the higher regional court in Hamm. In 1950 he became a district court judge at the Dortmund regional court. After a temporary position at the German Patent Office in Munich (1951 to 1953), he returned to the Higher Regional Court in Hamm in 1953 and was appointed Higher Regional Court Judge. Until his retirement in 1976, he dealt in particular with questions of family and inheritance law; he was also a member of the Judicial Examination Office at the Higher Regional Court in Hamm until 1968. He wrote two legal and legal policy treatises from 1952 to 1954 and a further 32 from 1968 to 1974.

His first chess problem appeared on August 13, 1929. Since then, with a few longer interruptions, particularly due to his studies and the war, he has been interested in problem composition, with a preference for presenting logical combinations and tasks with a few pieces. Since 1959 he was an "International Arbiter" and since 1967 also an "International Master" of the F.I.D.E. (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) for composition chess due to the number of problems and studies he had included in the FIDE albums (20 points were required, he achieved a total of 58.17 points). From 1959 to 1982 he was the first chairman (and then honorary chairman) of the "Schwalbe, German Association for Problem Chess". For 26 years (1963 to 1988) he edited the problem section of the traditional "Deutsche Schachzeitung" (German Chess Newspaper), which was then merged into Schach-Report, where he continued the section until 1991 (most recently on a smaller scale). In the years 1963 to 1982 he published several articles under the heading "Problem Chess Metamorphoses", later renamed "Sketchess Sketches". In 1993 he was awarded the German Chess Federation's Golden Badge of Honour, and in 1995 - after such honours were introduced there too - the "Schwalbe...".

Dr. Werner Speckmann died on February 23, 2001 in Hamm/Westphalia at the age of 87.

(Website Lothar Speckmann)

Works (selection)
Werner Speckmann: Strategy in the chess problem. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1959
Franz Palatz, Wilhelm Maßmann, Werner Speckmann, Karl Fabel: Kleinkunst im Schachproblem. Volume 2, Walter Rau Verlag, 1963
Werner Speckmann: The logical chess problem. Walter Rau Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1965.
Werner Speckmann: Chess miniatures with black queen.
Werner Speckmann: In retrospect.
Werner Speckmann: Selected chess problems. 1999.
See also Bücherreport (PDF file; 29 kB) - overview of the problem chess books published by Werner Speckmann with explanations by the author.

Individual references
 Short portrait in Schach-Echo, No. 6/1956, 96
Weblinks
problemschachbuch.de - Werner Speckmann's electronic chess books
wernerspeckmann.de - "In memoriam"
Compositions by Werner Speckmann on the PDB server

Source: Germain Wikipedia

Others: On Website of ARVES by Peter Boll 6 endgame studies are selected.

About his endgame studies: 

Werner Speckmann is known far beyond the borders of Germany for his chess miniatures and his problem chess books.

Werner Speckmann was a pronounced chess problem composer who loved logical manoeuvres and therefore also the Neudeutsche Problemkunst. 
It is hardly surprising that he therefore did not compose many chess studies. He was not a typical chess study composer, just as Ado Kraemer, Karl Fabel and Manfred Zucker were not.