Matthias Elgaß (19.8.1887-16.12.1969)

Chess composer

A whole series of problem players from the last century came into contact with chess for the first time in a wartime environment, be it while in the trenches or after an injury in a military hospital. One example of this is Matthias Elgaß (19.8.1887-16.12.1969), whose chess curriculum vitae, written by himself around 1960, begins with the fact that he was wounded for the third time on 19 July 1918 on the Western Front and was taken prisoner in France. Learning to play chess from his comrades, accompanied by attempts to solve chess problems, certainly falls into the category of killing time at first, but then some people become interested. This was also the case for Elgaß, who remained faithful to the art of chess after his release from captivity in the summer of 1919. Soon afterwards, he began to compose chess problems and mainly wrote 2 to 6-move problems based on his own ideas, without being able to be assigned to a particular school, and sometimes also tried his hand at variations of beautiful and difficult problems by other composers. This resulted in around 200 problems, most of which appeared in various newspapers and magazines and were "very favourably received by the majority of solvers".