Hassberg Ingenuity: For Eleanor Roosevelt

I will be devoting this blog to one thing and one thing only: the chess problems of Eric Hassberg. My reasons for this are twofold. First, I do not know enough about chess to feel that my thoughts on games or other things are valuable in and of themselves, and I therefore want to devote a blog to something that no one else has done or is doing. Second, this is a memorial to Eric who was/is my maternal grandfather, in the hope that his memory lives on.

To my knowledge, there exists only two "published" books that contain his work: Hassberg Ingenuity and Best American Chess Problems of 1946 which he edited. If you are aware of other places to find his work, please leave me a comment, I'll be much appreciative.

This first problem, was the first of his that was shown to me. Its beauty is in its simplicity. Like most of Hassberg's chess problems, is a two move checkmate where there is one (and only one!) move for white that results in checkmate. 

Eric M. Hassberg New York Post April 21, 1945 #2

As an Austrian Jew, Eric had fled the Nazis, first traveling to England before ending up in New York City. WWII was intensely personal and when FDR died April 12, 1945, he put this problem together to signify the Allies losing a great leader.