Josef Kling (* 19 March 1811 in Mainz; † 1 December 1876 in London) was a German chess player and important endgame study composer.

Josef Kling was originally a church musician and music teacher. He moved to Paris in 1834 and earned his living by playing chess in the Café de la Régence.

He then settled in London in 1837.

In 1836 he published a famous analysis of the endgame rook and bishop against rook in the chess magazine Le Palamède, which was adopted by Howard Staunton in his work Chess Player's Handbook in 1847. In 1849 Kling published the book The Chess Euclid, a collection of 200 chess problems. In 1851, together with Bernhard Horwitz, he published the book Chess studies, dedicated to Staunton, which mainly contained endgame studies. In a review of the book, Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa wrote about the difference between a problem and a study: "The positions differ from those of the very popular problems first of all in that they are extremely natural and as they easily occur at the end of a real game. Furthermore, however, the task, which is sometimes very difficult to solve, does not consist in reaching mate in measured moves under certain conditions, but only in arriving at a favourable position, whereby the number of moves is less important.

Between 1851 and 1853, Kling and Horwitz published the magazine The Chess Player, in which they published further endgame studies. On 1 June 1852, Kling opened Kling's Chess and Coffee Rooms in New Oxford Street in London, which existed until 1859 and was often visited by William Davies Evans and others. Kling remained present on the chess scene until his death and was an honorary member of the City of London Chess Club.

Source: Germain Wikipedia