Oskar Korschelt (born September 18, 1853 in Berthelsdorf/Upper Lusatia; died July 4, 1940 in Leipzig) was a German chemist and engineer who rendered outstanding services to the introduction of the Japanese board game Go in Europe.

Life and Go activities

Oskar or Oscar[2] Korschelt (some sources incorrectly give his first name as Otto; Otto is his older brother) came to Japan in 1876, where he accepted a teaching position at Tokyo Medical University. In October 1879, he gave up this position and worked for the Japanese government in many areas, such as geological soil analysis and the improvement of Japanese rice wine brewing. In May 1884, he was awarded a medal by the Japanese state for his services. The gravestone of his second daughter († 1882) can be seen in the foreign section of the famous Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo. In November 1884, after his contract expired, he returned briefly to Europe, arriving in Marseille on January 2, 1885. While his wife Marie (born August 4, 1852) remained in Zittau with their children Oskar (born April 15, 1878), Marie (born August 11, 1881), and Johanna (born April 5, 1885), he left for Hong Kong again in September. There he intended to produce rice wine and export it to Japan. However, as the venture could not be realized, he eventually returned to Germany.

During his stay in Japan, he learned how to play Go. It is said that he played against the (later) Hon'inbō Murase Shuho with a six-stone handicap (which would mean that he was a fairly strong amateur player). With Shuho's help, he published a series of articles in 1880 entitled “The Japanese-Chinese Game of Go.” A Concurrent of Chess in the Communications of the German Society for Natural and Ethnological Studies of East Asia. This was the first detailed description of the game in the Western world. The book contained twelve annotated master games, 155 tsumego problems, and introductions to fuseki and endgame theory. In it, he also introduced the marking of lines with Latin letters and European numbers, which is still common today. The book's importance for the development of Go in Europe and North America cannot be overestimated. Its English version is still in print today.

In the mid-1880s, Korschelt returned to Germany and settled in Leipzig. Not much is known about his further Go activities, but Bruno Rüger, another early Go enthusiast and promoter, visited him in 1924 to play Go with him.

Korschelt made his living from selling the Sun Ether Ray Apparatus, which he invented and patented in the German Empire on June 14, 1891, under number 69340. The device was claimed to make “ether particles” from the sun usable for humans. The theory behind it anticipates ideas that were later developed by Wilhelm Reich with orgone therapy. He received the gold medal from the jury at the exhibition for popular health and nursing care in Halle an der Saale in August 1891 for the device.

Chess composition

Korschelt also distinguished himself as a collector of chess compositions. He also composed several pieces himself. According to Herbert Grasemann, he built up a collection of around 100,000 problems. An obituary in the Deutsche Schachzeitung in 1940 gave the figure as 85,000. [7]

In 1928, Korschelt donated his collection of problems to the German Chess Federation (DSB). Its secretary, Albert Hild, took over its administration: 80,888 chess problems from the period up to 1912, handwritten on slips of paper. The DSB board decided to pay Korschelt a retirement pension from the DSB coffers in recognition of his long-standing services to German chess. In 1928, the Korschelt collection was comparable worldwide only to the collection of Alain Campbell White, which was maintained at the time by George Hume in England. [8] The collection was later kept by Josef Fischl, who passed it on to Wolfgang Klein.

Oskar Korschelt (18-09-1853 - 04-07-1940) German chess composer

He was a chemist and chess collector who gathered around 100,000 problems.
He also introduced the game of Go to Europe. He is said to have composed "einige Stücke" but we have not found any.

Source: chesscomposers.blogspot.com