Bristol Times and Mirror, 1927

White to mate in 2 (hard)

A fully composed position, and a nice one at that. Pity the composer's name is not shown.

Romanian composer 

Israel Abraham Schiffmann 

Thanks for the name.  Schiffmann reigns supreme!

It's a twomover sameez1 would love to have posted!

There is peculiar aspect to it though. What are the black pawns on f2 and h2 doing? They look to be completely redundant and I can't think of a single reason why Schiffman would have placed them there!

Here is an alternative setting without the questionable pawns and with a thematic try - two thematic tries if you accept a piece capturing key move as a try:

An explanation of the black pawns on f2 and h2 is given on the following web-link:

http://kmoen.people.ua.edu/by-play-blog/schiffmann-surprise-keys

to quote:

"When the problem was composed duals of any type were considered flaws and the pawns were there to prevent them"

Hence if the black queen were to move to h2/f2/e1 then duals occur.  Your version of this problem is nice but increases the number of duals, if you consider that to be important?

Today, duals on unthematic/unschematic black defenses are not considered significant in the same way that you don't consider it a blemish could you have won in multiple ways had your opponent defended worse than he did in an actual game. Now of course it is neat when there happens to be a single mate on every defense but it is hardly worth getting there artificially by adding ugly pawns or sacrificing potential content. For instance, the Rf3 try in my version adds more to the content than is lost by the "dualfree" solution.

But OK, times change and I can at least see now what was behind it then.

A neat explanation about what is a significant/insignificant dual. Thanks.