Heinrich Cordes (chess composer)

Heinrich Cordes (born October 10, 1852 in Altenhundem; † April 24, 1917 in Berlin) was a German chess composer and writer.

Chess composition
First and foremost, Cordes was a successful solver; he often discovered secondary solutions and won various solving tournaments. He probably only composed occasionally.

He became known for his interesting endgame study in which a bishop prevails against a queen with a waiting move.It became the starting point for the idea of mutual coercion.

The figure configuration was taken up and further developed in studies by Amelung in 1895, by Kaminer in 1925, by Gasparjan in 1934, by Rusinek in 1971 and by Alexej Kotow in 1985.

Cordes later varied his idea again. He also published some chess problems in the German Weekly Chess and the German Chess Newspaper.

Life
Cordes was born the son of a farmer. In 1868 and 1869 he completed his lower and upper secondary studies in Altenhundem. He will later graduate from high school in Paderborn.

In 1874 Cordes came to Berlin to study. He then returned to his homeland.

Cordes finally came to Berlin from Elberfeld as a railway construction inspector between 1892 and 1894 and soon moved to Grunewald. He was a royal government councilor and most recently a secret construction officer as well as head of the main railway workshop Grunewald in Halensee. In the fall of 1902 he had an accident on a new locomotive during a test run between the Charlottenburg and Grunewald train stations.

Writers and poets
Even at a young age, Cordes immersed himself in the legends of his ancestors. Cordes' estate includes unpublished stories such as The Dowsing Rod or Bell Casting of Attendorn as well as ghost stories, historical ballads and poems.

After his accident in which his right arm was amputated, he began to learn to write with his left hand.

While on his sick bed he remembers the treasure trove of legends from his homeland, and his main work “Sauerland, you dreamer” is created. It describes what things were like in the Sauerland 1000 years ago.

factories
Heinrich Cordes: Trade routes and water connections from Hankow to the interior of China. Berlin, Mittler and Son, 1899
Heinrich Cordes: Sauerland, you dreamer. Paderborn, Bonifacius-Dr., 1906, 115 p.; 2nd edition 1928; 3rd edition Attendorn, Cordes, 1981, 97 p.

Publications about Cordes
F. A. Groeteken: Heinrich Cordes. A poet's life in the Sauerland house. in: Olper Heimatbl., 8, 1931, pp. 186–188
Jochen Krause: People from home. Part I (1 to 33). AY-Verlag, Olpe 1987, pp. 133–137, ISBN 3-922659-77-2
Walter Godden; Iris Nölle-Hornkamp (ed.): Westphalian Author Lexicon 1850–1900. Ferdinand Schöningh, 1997, p. 135

Web links
On March 23, 1925, the workshop path in Charlottenburg was renamed Cordesstraße after him.
Literature by and about Heinrich Cordes in the catalog of the German National Library
Compositions by Heinrich Cordes on the PDB server
Heinrich Cordes in the lexicon of Westphalian authors
Individual evidence
  Obituary in: German Weekly Chess, May 13, 1917
  Rigaer Tageblatt, 1895, 2. Price
  Friedrich Amelung: Reciprocal speeding requirement. In: Deutsche Schachzeitung, 51(9), September 1897, p. 257 f.
  1050. German weekly chess, 1908
  Cordesstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstadt Educational Association (near Kaupert)
  German weekly chess and Berlin chess newspaper No. 40, October 5, 1902, p. 331 (Memento from July 23, 2012 in the web archive archive.today)/

Source: Germain Wikipedia