Hermann Albrecht

Hermann Albrecht (* 30 August 1915 in Marburg; † 26 May 1982 in Frankfurt am Main) was a well-known German chess composer and author. He created the Albrecht Collection, a collection of two-move pieces that is famous among experts.

He was a two -mover specialist. He did not compose much but was very sollicited for anticipation research, because of his vast collection of more than 80,000 twomovers. This collection, the 'Albrecht-Sammlung', was later inherited and enriched by Udo Degener. Udo published in 2007 the book "Hermann Albrecht - 117 Zweizüger" about his work.

Hermann Albrecht was the editor of the twomover section of "Die Schwalbe" from 1946 until 1963 and an International Judge since 1957. (Written by Chess composers)

Die Schwalbe (Germain magazine) reports about him on october 2015 (Issue 275)

The last issue should have commemorated the 100th birthday of Hermann Albrecht (30.8.1915-26.5.1982), but for some inexplicable reason the anniversary of this outstanding two-move expert slipped through the net. His "Albrecht Collection" made him a globally recognised authority; it was continued after Albrecht's death by H. D. Leiß and lives on, in the third generation so to speak, under the care of Udo Degener, to whom I was able to bring a whole boot full of index cards from Trier to Potsdam in 1995, where the collection was then gradually entered into a database - a huge task, comparable to the digitisation of the Niemann-Hilfsmatt collection. The Schwalbe is organising a memorial tournament in cooperation with Albrecht's daughter (see elsewhere in this issue).

Source: dieschwalbe.de

Albrecht collection on the internet
Published on 16 December 2016

"The two-move collection once founded by Hermann Albrecht (30/08/1915-26/05/1982) is now available on the Internet!

After Albrecht's death, Hans-Dieter Leiß (15.01.1941-23.10.1994) took over and continued the collection, which at that time comprised around 85,000 tasks. Eventually it ended up with Udo Degener, who continues to manage it intensively (today: more than 190,000 tasks!!) and has long been working on preparing it for the Internet. It is now usable, but of course remains a work in progress.

I admire the marvellous achievement of bringing such a previously paper-based collection onto the Internet: It's much more than "just" capturing the diagrams and solutions, just as important and even more labour-intensive is the meaningful and systematic keywording in order to be able to make topic-related queries. Incredibly valuable for the two-move specialist, but also for all other problemists a collection that invites you to visit and browse again and again!"

Private life
After studying German, English and history in Leipzig from 1935 to 1939, he embarked on a career as a senior civil servant in Dresden and Zwickau. In 1944, he was called up for military service and was taken prisoner of war in France. There he actively composed chess pieces. After his release in 1946, he initially worked as an interpreter for the American armed forces and from 1950 as an editor and translator for the AP news agency in Frankfurt am Main.