Kling conditionals December 30, 2007
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The elusive Herr Kling

The two conditional problems we are presenting on this page are, in our problem collections, always attributed to "H. Kling". This is slightly mysterious, since an H. Kling does not otherwise seem to have done much composing. On the other hand there is a composer named Josef King who produced large quantities of problems in his heyday in the 19th century.

Perhaps the mixup was caused by the above book, where the author is given simply as "Herr Kling", German for "Mr Kling". Could it be that people compiling chess problems mistook this for a first name? We do not know for sure and would appreciate information on the question.

In the Chess Euclid book the author signs the foreword with "J. KLING, Professor of Music." The German chess master, endgame expert and chess composer Josef Kling, born in 1811, was indeed a church musician and music teacher. However, in 1834 he moved to Paris and started to earn his living by playing chess in the famous Café de la Regence. Three years later he moved to London, where he lived until his death in 1876. He is famous for his milestone endgame analyses, some done alone, some in collaboration with Bernhard Horwitz, with whom he published the well-known book "Chess Studies". Kling is famous for his analysis of the endgame rook and bishop vs rook; and he and Horwitz contributed to the extensive analysis of two bishops vs knight, which was only corrected when the five-piece endgame databases generated by Ken Thompson showed that the "Kling & Horwitz" defence could be overcome. The only picture we have found of Kling is the one on the right.

Addendum: Edward Winter of Chess Notes sent us the following picture, which was a "Beilage zum Deutschen Wochenschach 1910, No. 14".

The photograph is labeled "Kling. Healey."

Apart from serious analytical contributions to endgame theory Kling was also a composer with a sense for the weird. His direct mate problems are imaginative and sometimes humorous. But he also kept coming up with unorthodox problems, like "Suicidal Problems" (these days we call them "selfmates") and "Problems with conditions". Here are two of the latter species.

H. (J.) Kling, 1849

White to mate in three – with his pawn!

Of course you can see that White has a mate in one – Qc8# – but it is not so easy to find one that is delivered by the pawn.

The first puzzle is fairly easy, especially after you have discarded your first, fairly obvious plan which simply does not work. The next problem is more difficult – we looked up the solution after half an hour of futile attempts.

H. (J.) Kling, 1849

White to play, mates in six, only moving his king

Once again White has a mate in one, the same as in the previous puzzle: Qc8#. But Herr Joseph Kling wants us to only move the white king. That makes the matter more difficult. The solution is well worth the effort involved in finding it (says someone who didn't).

Please do not submit solutions yet.
We will be publishing the solutions at the end of the series (after January 1st).

Frederic Friedel