Edith Keller

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L-R: Seltenheitswert Reichstrainer Willi Schlage, Karl Krbavac, Edith Keller, Klaus Junge, Wolfgang Unzicker, Rudolf Kunath.

 

The above well known photo was taken during Jugendschachwoche (Chess Youth Week or Chess Camp held from Aug. 11-20, 1939) in the town of Fürstenwalde (55 km east of Berlin), where exceptional young German players trained briefly, but intensely with Willi Schlage, Reichstrainer des Großdeutschen Schachbundes.  Schlage, a great trainer who, along with Alekhine and Bogoljubow, trained the German team for the unofficial Olympiad in Munich in 1936, is now best remembered for a 1910 game he played as black against an almost-NN named Roesch.  This 15 move miniature has been forever immortalized in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey as the game between Frank Poole (Roesch) and the HAL9000 computer (Schlage):

 

 


 

Edith Keller, who later married Dr. Lutz Herrmann, was the sister of IM Rudolf Keller, but was herself awarded the title of Woman Grandmaster in 1978. (She was awarded WIM in 1950 when her brother was awarded IM). She began playing chess at 14 (1935) and entered her first tournament 4 years later. She won the German Women's Championship in 1942 and, after WWII, won it 5 more times. Additionally, she won the Eastern German Women's Champion a total of 5 times. She played in men's tournaments drawing a game against Bogoljubow and beating Nicolas Rossolimo.
Edith Keller-Herrmann died this year on May 12 at the age of 88.

Here is a rather long but very clever game Edith Keller won from the wonderful Fenny Heemskerk during the 1950 Women's World Championship Candidate Tournament:

 

 

Of the others in the photo, Klaus Junge and Wolfgang Unzicker are quite well known while Karl Krbavac and Rudolf Kunath have mostly faded unremarkably into history.