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| | | (1) Posted by Joseph Balsamo [Sunday, Sep 27, 2009 01:38] | Engberg or maybe Zimmermann
Ernst W. Engberg was a New York / Brooklyn composer of the 1890s, usually known as E. W. Engberg. I have found his first name in a solvers’ list in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He is not listed in Gaige, PDB, or Maeder’s pages at http://zulu.maia.ch/~iseli. No problems of his are given in Meson, yacpdb, PDB Server, and other databases. Yet, he was not that obscure during his time; he was the problem editor of the American Chess Magazine (also known as Borsodi’s for disambiguation, as there were at least two other ACMs). His problems appeared in the Eagle, ACM, and BCM (1896-99). I would like to know if anyone has any additional information about him (with full references when possible):
(a) Dates of birth / death etc.
(b) Other columns where he published originals, etc.
(c) Evidence of chess activity before 1895 or after 1900.
(d) Was he ever accused of plagiarism?
Why the last question? The following Meredith #2 appeared as on original by Engberg (276 Brooklyn Daily Eagle 16/iii/1899):
 (= 8+4 )
Several databases, (e.g. yacpdb 29298), however give the mirror image of this as:
Štěpán Zimmermann, Shakhmatny Zhurnal 1894. I have as yet been unable to verify this; can anyone give a printed source for the Zimmermann problem?
The question could have been filed equally well under the “X-Files” group, but I feel it is more of a historical nature.
| | | (2) Posted by [Sunday, Sep 27, 2009 13:15]; edited by [09-09-27] |
I have three problems from American Chess Magazine 1897-98 (no real need for 'Borsodi's',
as the other ACM's did not publish in this period), and I can find one or two in later volumes.
But I can't remember having come across his name anywhere else.
(added: Engberg was sole problem editor of ACM only at the end, I believe. I've gone over volume 1,
and Engberg's name appears in issue 5, in October 1897, but as W. A. Shinkman is also listed
among the people whose cooperation the editor relies on, along with F. M. Teed, I would judge
him to be a rather minor editor. Shinkman disappears from the list in March, 1899, and in
May, 1899 only Broughton and Engberg remains on it, and remains so to the end in December.)
Brooklyn seems (to some minor extent) to have been a kind of 'little Scandinavia' at this
time: many Scandinavian immigrants or temporary workers ended up there for longer or shorter
period. And as Engberg has a Swedish ring to it (in my somewhat prejudiced ears), I would
expect to find more information in US immigrant records. Passenger lists is another possibility.
It doesn't seem too difficult to find out more about him -- I locate a person of that name
in the US Census records for 1910, 1920 and 1930 (living in Kings, New York -- if that's
Kings County, it's Brooklyn), and I see that there are naturalization records as well as
immigrant records for someone of that name. (Try Ancestry.com -- it's a commercial service,
but unless you are in the US or have easy access to microfilms of the records it's probably
worth a trial if you do dig around in genealogy.)
As to the question of plagiarism, you are unlikely to find anything, unless it was blatant,
or perhaps if you come across chess club minutes of disciplinary measures from the time.
I remember a similar issue in Wiener Schachzeitung when a minor German problem author was
accused of having copied a Russian source, and Georg Marco defended him by observing that
as Russian periodicals were so rare in Germany, it was at least equally likely that it was
independent invention. (But as Zimmermann had several of his problems published/republished in
German sources, perhaps it's not necessary to go to Russia for the source.)
And if you go over Deutsche Schachzeitung from the mid-1880s or so, you'll find a recurring
theme on duplicated ideas. In the earliest there were some suspicions of plagiarism, but
as more and more were listed, it became clear that people do tend to think alike.
One of these notes, I recall, was about V. Novák who had published an exact copy of a Dobruský
problem, and was consequently accused of plagiarism. Turned out that Dobruský used Novák as
pseudonym for problems that were not up to what he thought was his usual standard, but he had got
mixed up, and used both names for it.
(Thanks for an interesting question, by the way -- I'm just reading about another Engberg
who tried to shoot his mother to relieve her misery over his wayward behaviour, but who
seems to have avoided prosecution since his mother more or less perjured herself on his
behalf...)
| | | (3) Posted by Michael McDowell [Sunday, Sep 27, 2009 16:04] |
I see no reason to suspect plagiarism rather than coincidence when the position is so simple (of course if there are other cases involving the same composer that's different!).
Curiously, the Christmas book "Simple two-Move Themes" features the following position:
N.Maximov
Schachmatni Zurnal Sept.1896
 (= 6+3 )
Mate in 2
| | | (4) Posted by Michal Dragoun [Sunday, Sep 27, 2009 16:05] |
Mirrored position of the problem quoted is included in the collection of Bohemian problems by the late Vladimír Kos as Štěpán Zimmermann, Šachmatnyj žurnal 1894 too, but I am not able to check it in original source.
| | | (5) Posted by Hauke Reddmann [Sunday, Sep 27, 2009 18:34] |
@Michael - I don't even see it with the position crowded :-)
At my website (http://www.bambam42.de/problem/index.html)
I painstakingly list all anticipations to my problems
I'll ever find out. It's a rather long list by now (surely
also due to the fact my taste is about 50 years behind) and
even contains an exact mirror of a 10+9 position. Noone ever
thought of accusing me yet, though :-)
BTW, my computer brain even spotted a (on the first look)
completely equal position in the 2# sections of two(?) FIDE
albae. Sordidly I never marked it for further reference.
Coda: *One* equal position doesn't even *hint* plagiarism.
Hauke
| | | (6) Posted by Joseph Balsamo [Friday, Oct 2, 2009 21:59] |
What I would like to know is where (what printed source) the database copied the problem from. Presumably not the original magazine. This would help verify priority.
| | | (7) Posted by [Friday, Dec 31, 2010 11:59]; edited by [10-12-31] |
A recent e-mail brought this old question to mind again.
I have nothing new to report, though, apart from the observation that I have found a second collision,
not involving Engberg, but Zimmerman:
The following problem appeared in Deutsche Schachzeitung in July, 1889:
F. Kollmann in Prag
 (= 6+7 )
#3
In YACPDB I find the same position, mirrored vertically, by St. Zimmerman. No source, only '1897'.
All five sources listed have all the same info -- it seems reasonable to guess that they rely on the
same source. At a guess, it might be the Török collection -- the Problemist source listed mention has
Török as compiler in the actual database file.
In my own collection (mainly from Deutsche Schachzeitung, so rather restricted), I find Zimmermann to
be associated with Boleslav and Jungbunzlau, which seems to be different names for the modern Mladá Boleslav,
north-east of Prague. It doesn't seem entirely improbable that Zimmermann may have come into contact
with Kollmann and his problems. Deliberate plagiarism seems improbable -- Zimmerman was far too active
for that.
As Kollmann and Zimmermann were both problemists in Bohemia, the possibility of a mixup somewhere cannot
be discounted either -- perhaps by the source that printed the Zimmerman problem from 1897.
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