Wilhelm Fölser

Wilhelm Fölser (08-05-1935 - 02-1998) Austrian chess composer

  Wilhelm Fölser (+ 1998)  was born on 8 May 1935 to a working-class family in Linz. At the age of 12, he learnt the "basics" of chess from his father, and when he received the Dufresne-Mieses chess textbook (2nd edition from the 19th century) ten years later, this was to seal a "bond for life". Wilhelm Fölser earned his first merits at the game level at SV Urfahr in Linz. One of the highlights of his tournament career was the founding of the Linz chess club "Spartakus" in the early 1980s, which he played a leading role in, and which celebrated a brilliant debut under Fölser's patronage.   His deep-rooted love of the royal game, which he had served with pedagogical fervour as a propagandist and animator, also encompassed the art of problem solving from the very beginning. The results of the excursions that W. Fölser occasionally undertook into the realm of orthodox composition did not claim the rank of masterpieces, but they were always likely to win the subject new friends. ( From 1991 until his death in February 1998, Wilhelm Fölser was an active member of the Linz Workers' Chess Club )