Emil Josef Diemer, RIP

Today is the 22nd anniversary of Diemer's death on 10 October 1990. After receiving the news of his passing I wrote a short tribute, which surveyed commentary in German newspapers and chess magazines. It originally appeared in the January 1991 issue of BDG World.

You can see the article here.

A Diemer scoresheet

Since first becoming interested in the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit—almost forty years ago now—I’ve collected just about anything I could find on the opening, on Blackmar, on Diemer. Books, magazine articles, photos. correspondence, whatever. Scoresheets—here’s one I scanned from the original.

This is Diemer's scoresheet of one of a series of BDGs he played with Manfred Kloss in August 1959. On the back page he wrote:

A typical BDG game!
The sword of Damocles has won more victories than the sword of Caesar. (Khrushchev)
The goddess of victory surrenders only to he who courts her with strong will. (de Gaulle)

That’s heavy stuff, but I think it’s still okay to play the game just for the fun of it. No, really!

More old BDG friends

Old photos again... I was rummaging through back issues of BDG WORLD and in Vol III, No 5, Oct-Dec 1985 I came across this photo and caption: 

Bob Fleuriot was in Europe a few months ago,and stopped by to pay his respects to E. J. Diemer, who lives now in the little village of Fussbach in the Black Forest. Bob sent us this photo of himself with EJD. If they’re considering a position on the board, Bob (on the left) would seem to be more content with it.

Bob and I played a few correspondence BDGs. He went way back with the opening. I think he had good nerves. I say that because he was willing to venture a Kampars Gambit against the Vienna Defense. You have to have good nerves for that. After he won it he received a congratulatory letter from Kampars himself (you remember letters—people sent those in the days before email). Here’s that game, presented without notes. My nerves won’t stand for it.

A new walk on an old battlefield

The photo of old BDG friends which I posted recently induced me to review the battle between Diemer and Gunter Müller, Biel 1975, which Gunter annotated for BDG WORLD 25 in December 1986. I’ve retained Gunter’s original notes and augmented them with a few of my own (indicated with ***), assisted by computer analysis and tablebases which were of course not readily available almost a quarter century ago.

Some BDG Buddies

You get more that way the older you get. You’re looking for something, a missing key, say, and you open a drawer and there's an old box. You open the box, and look, there’s an envelope, and inside, why, some old pictures. And now the key is forgotten. Now it’s the pictures...

 

The pictures, like this one, about a quarter of a century old now, taken somewhere in Germany in the late 1980s. I once played correspondence chess with all these guys, except the old fellow with the white beard.

The gentleman with the tie is Walter Schneider, who did yeoman’s service in directing the finals of the first BDG World Correspondence Championship. Standing to Walter’s right is Gunter Müller, a master correspondence player and finalist in that tournament, finishing sixth in a field that began with 276 players. Seated in front of Gunter is Volker Drüke, editor of BDG-Revue, later Gambit-Revue, and beside Volker is the old master himself, E. J. Diemer.

Looking through the old pictures...

Diemer Yes, Blackmar No

Diemer wrote that he played his first BDG "on the international stage" at a tourney in Czechoslovakia in 1936 (Diemer—Fux). However, he had not completely abandoned his old favorite, the Colle. From the same event:

Continuity

While looking over Euwe Defense games I once again came across this well-known one of Diemer's:

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

Diemer EJ - Fuller RA

1-0 (0292 Hastings Pr Resv Major) 1957

[#] 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.e4 dxe4 4.f3 exf3 5.Nxf3 e6 6.Bg5 Be7 7.Qd2 O-O 8.Bd3 Nbd7 9.Qf4 Freidl notes that the English master now took 32 minutes deciding on his next move. 9...b6 10.Qh4 Re8 (else Bxh7+) 11.Ne5 Nf8 12.Nc6 Qd6 13.Nxe7+ Qxe7 14.O-O Ng6 15.Bxg6 fxg6

[15...hxg6? 16.Ne4 (or16.Rxf6 )]

16.Ne4 Rf8 17.Bxf6 gxf6 18.Rxf6

[18.Nxf6+ was stronger.]

18...Rxf6 19.Nxf6+ Kh8 20.Qe4 Rb8 21.Rf1 Bb7 22.Qe5 Qd6? (Only Qg7 survives--Diemer) 23.Ne8+ [1-0]

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One of the many satisfying aspects of chess is its continuity, the recurrence of themes and ideas over the years. For example, consider this game by one of strongest BDG players of recent years.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H

Diebert Charles - Bath J

1-0 (0097) 1983

[#] 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Be3 Alapin-Diemer Gambit 3...dxe4 4.Nd2 Nf6 5.f3 Nd5 6.Qe2 c5 7.dxc5 Qa5 8.c3 Nxe3 9.Qxe3 Bxc5 10.Qxe4 Bxg1 11.Rxg1 Qb6 12.O-O-O Nd7 13.Be2 Nf6 14.Qh4 Qa5 15.Nc4 Qxa2 16.Nd6+ Kf8 17.Qb4 a5 18.Qc5 Nd7 19.Nxc8+ Nxc5 20.Rd8# [1-0]

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