Vitaly Halberstadt

Vitali Halberstadt ( born March 20, 1903 in Odessa, Ukraine, † October 25th 1967 in Paris, France) was a French author of chess compositions.

Game of chess

Halberstadt won in recent years also in practical chess successes. He won 1925 points with Abraham Baratz the championship of Paris. Even in later city championships and French tournaments, he scored acceptable results, in 1928, he was joint winner of the tournament in Hyères with Marcel Duchamp and John O'Hanlon.

Composition

Since 1924, he wrote more than two hundred studies, 19 of which were included in the FIDE Album. 1957 Halberstadt was International Arbiter of chess compositions. Together with the famous artist Marcel Duchamp, who was also mentioned as a strong chess player, Halberstadt wrote an oriented due to the inclusion of aesthetic elements book on endgame studies.

As André Cheron preferred Halberstadt analytical studies, he rarely worked in the romantic style. He was editor of the study section in the chess magazine Thèmes -64. In 1954 he published a collection of his studies in Paris. It included 77 of his works.

Solution: 1.f5 - f6 KG7 - h8! 2.Lg8 -d5! Se2 -d4 3.Ld5 -e4 Sh2 - g4 4.f6 f7 - f5 Sh4! 5.Le4xf5 Sg4 - h6 6.f7 - F8T ! and profit or 2 ... Se2 - f4 3.Ld5 -e4 Sh2 - g4 4.f6 - f7 - g6 Sf4! 5.Le4xg6 Sg4 - h6 6.f7 - F8L! and profit For stalemate would each 6.f8D ? Ng8 lead. In the lower variant 6.f8T fails ? 6th .. KG7 7.Lc2 Ng8 8.Ke8 Nf6 and perpetual check.

Private

Vitali Halberstadt emigrated after the Russian Civil War to France and lived there until his death in Paris. His wife died in the early 1960s in a traffic accident in which his son was seriously injured. Halberstadt's health deteriorated after such an extent that he stopped the chess composition and composed again only in the last twelve months of his life.

Halberstadt was a highly educated man and had next to the chess even more diverse intellectual interests in the field of art. He was interested in philosophy, literature and painting. In addition, Halberstadt had contacts with major and well-known people of French culture and chess, among other things, André Cheron, Alfred Cortot, Savielly Tartakower, Eugène Snosko - Borowski and his friend with him Marcel Duchamp.

The grave of Halberstadt is located at the Paris Auteuil cemetery.

Works

• Vitali Halberstadt and Marcel Duchamp: L' Opposition et les cases conjuguées sont réconciliées (Paris- Brussels 1932 German edition in 2001 under the title of opposition and sister fields, ISBN 3-932170-35-0 )
• Vitali Halberstadt: Curiosités Tactiques the finale, Paris 1954