Wilhelm Maßmann

Wilhelm Karl Heinrich Maßmann (* 6 July 1895 in Preetz; † 17 December 1974 in Kiel) was an important German chess collector and chess composer.

His life
Maßmann was the son of a master bricklayer. After the First World War, he studied law, later set up as a lawyer and obtained his doctorate in law in 1929. He also worked as a lawyer in Kiel after the Second World War.

Chess composition
Since his youth, Maßmann had been interested in chess, which he learnt from his father as a boy. He only took part in local tournaments two or three times, his passion being chess composition. He was particularly fond of miniature chess, the tasks with a maximum of seven pieces. It was in this field that he made his most significant achievements. His first chess miniatures were created between 1914 and 1916, and a total of 646 works of them are known to exist.

At the beginning of the 1930s, he published a series of two-move miniatures in the Kieler Neueste Nachrichten under the pseudonym "Kl. Kleinschmied". Maßmann also distinguished himself in the literary field with highly regarded essays and translations on chess composition. In 1925 he translated the famous White book on Sam Loyd.

Miniature collection
Maßmann's miniature collection was one of the most comprehensive collections of miniatures at the time. The "original" Maßmann collection went back to Wilhelm Maßmann's father, Peter Asmus Maßmann († 1936), who left his son a systematically organised collection of over 9,000 miniatures. At the beginning of the 1960s, the miniature collection was transferred to index cards. At the time of Wilhelm Maßmann's death, it comprised around 18,000 tasks from the beginning of chess composition. The chess player and composer Bodo von Dehn and, after his death, Kay Soltsien were involved in compiling this collection.

The collection consists of several card index boxes, is in the possession of the Schleswig-Holstein State Library and can be viewed in Kiel. Its contents were largely transferred to the files of the miniature collections of the late Klaus-Peter Zuncke from Erfurt and Wolfgang Alexander Bruder from Dossenheim.

The Maßmann library
Wilhelm Maßmann's chess library of around 1500 volumes was transferred to the Schleswig-Holstein State Library in 1974 in accordance with Maßmann's will. Inspired by the publication in 1982 of the catalogue of the Maßmann library compiled by Horst Lüders, the Lübeck banker Gerd Meyer decreed that his own, more extensive chess library should also be transferred to this library after his death, which took place in 1994. This makes the Schleswig-Holstein State Library the largest chess library in Germany.

Works
Alain Campbell White: Sam Loyd and his chess problems. Authorized translation by Wilhelm Maßmann. Schachverlag Hans Hedewig's Nachf. Curt Ronniger, Leipzig, 1926.
Franz Palatz, Wilhelm Maßmann, Werner Speckmann, Karl Fabel: Small art 120 chess miniatures. A. Lapáček in Prague, 1943
Franz Palatz, Wilhelm Maßmann, Werner Speckmann, Karl Fabel: Small art in chess problems. Walter Rau Verlag, Düsseldorf 1967, 2nd edition (Southwest chess series, volume 7)
Individual references
Hartmut Laue and Horst Lüders: Wilhelm Maßmann and his collections. In: Horst Lüders: Schachbibliothek Maßmann. Kiel, Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesbibliothek, 1995, pp. VII-VIII.
Horst Lüders: The Massmann Chess Library, Schleswig-Holstein State Library, Kiel 1982
Horst Lüders Memorial Page
Weblinks
Commons: Wilhelm Massmann – collection of images, videos and audio files
Schleswig-Holstein State Library Maßmann collection with link to the catalog
Ralf Jürgen Binnewirtz: Collectors and collections. Part I: Problems
Compositions by Wilhelm Maßmann (chess collector) on the Schwalbe PDB server