100th anniversary of Paul Schmidt

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Paul Felix Schmidt (*20-08-1916 Narwa [Narva], Estonia; †11-08-1984 Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA) and of the 130th anniversary of his father Paul Roderich Schmidt (*20-08-1886 Fellin [Viljandi], Estonia; †21-04-1969 Heidelberg, Germany) we give a short note with some information on the former, who was a chemist by profession and a strong chess IM.

The book on Paul F. Schmidt - a biography (in German and English) and game collection - by Anthony Gillam and Michael Negele is still in preparation. As to its publication, there will be a delay of about 3 months, mainly due to an immense accumulation of new information since January 2016 (after the update of the Estonian retrieval platform Digar). So we may expect its release at the end of coming November.

Dust jacket of the book
Dust jacket of the book

We give a short article (PDF) on Paul F. Schmidt by Bodo von Dehn, taken from Schach-Echo 1954 (p188). It contains one of two (!) immortal games played by Schmidt, here the game P.F. Schmidt vs Novarra, Crakow 1941.

His second "immortal" played Paul F. Schmidt against his father Paul Roderich Schmidt in Heidelberg, 1946. The game fragment with the deciding brilliant combination was reprinted in Schach-Echo, issue 9/1954, p142 (PDF). By that combination P.F. Schmidt has also made his father sort of immortal.
Obviously the position had first been made public by Kurt Richter; it was published in Mannheimer Morgen and in Der Tagesspiegel (Richter’s chess column), both in January 1947.
In this connection the Swedish story (PDF, 3.3 MB) by Calle Erlandsson and Lars Grahn that this position has even been included in the musical CHESS, may be of interest (TfS nr 6/2007, pp 42-50).

(According to Michael Negele, Wuppertal)

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