Kurt Dreyer (31 July 1909 in

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region () of Detmold (region), Detmold and the L ...

, Germany – 29 September 1981 in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

, South Africa) was a German–South African

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

master and functionary.

Early life and education

Kurt Dreyer was born the son of the Jewish physician Felix Dreyer (1874–1955) and his wife Johanna, née Marx (1879–1974), who served as chairwoman of the Bielefeld Jewish Women's Association; his brother Hans-Rudolf (b. 1913) became a businessman in Johannesburg. In 1927/28, Kurt attended the universities of Heidelberg and Hamburg, and from 1928 to 1930 he studied in Paris and Frankfurt am Main. A student of

Hugo Sinzheimer Hugo Sinzheimer (; 12 April 1875 – 16 September 1945) was a German legal scholar and contributed to the writing of the Weimar Constitution. He was a leading proponent of the concept of social law. Biography Sinzheimer was one of the first acad ...

he obtained his doctorate in law in Frankfurt in February 1933. Alongside his academic career, he was a member of the Bielefeld chess club and had won the

Westphalia Westphalia (; ; ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the region is almost identical with the h ...

n Championship in 1930, having initially founded and presided over the grammar school chess club.

Emigration and life in South Africa

Kurt Dreyer was forced to emigrate from Germany because of the country's Nazi policies. He first went to Belgium on a student visa in September 1933, but had to return to Germany in March 1934 because he did not have a work permit. In November 1935 he managed to emigrate to South Africa, where he worked as a clerk, branch accountant, assistant manager and local secretary at head office for

OK Bazaars OK Bazaars is one of the oldest retail shops in South Africa, established in 1927 by partners Michael Miller and Sam Cohen still in existence today. The first shop opened in corner President and Eloff streets in Johannesburg and over the years th ...

in Johannesburg until 1956. In 1939, he did his military service in the Royal Light Infantry, although he did not become a South African citizen until 1943. He subsequently worked as an accounting manager, among others for Dreyer & Statham Pty. Ltd (from 1956 to 1968) and Orthopaedic Suppliers Pty. Ltd (from 1965) in Johannesburg. Dreyer was South African Champion in 1937 (after a play-off) and 1947 (jointly with

Wolfgang Heidenfeld Wolfgang Heidenfeld (; 29 May 1911 – 3 August 1981) was a German chess player and chess composer. Heidenfeld was born in Berlin. He was forced to move from Germany to South Africa in the 1930s because he was a Jew. There, he won the South Af ...

). He took 15th at Dublin 1957 (zonal, Ludek Pachman won). and won the South African and Rhodesian open chess championships in 1969. Dreyer represented South Africa in

Chess Olympiads The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 and ...

at Munich 1958, Tel Aviv 1964, Havana 1966, and Siegen 1970.OlimpBase :: the encyclopaedia of team chess
/ref> In addition, Dreyer served as president of the Chess Federation for South African from 1953 to 1960, and was subsequently made honorary vice president. He also worked as South African chess correspondent for ''Chess Express'', ''Deutsche Schachblätter'', and '' Chess Magazine''. In 1939 he married Eva Dreyer, née Wolfes (b. 1918), with whom he had two children, Frank (b. 1943) and Kenneth Dreyer (b. 1945).

References

External links

* 1909 births 1981 deaths South African chess players Jewish chess players 20th-century German chess players Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to South Africa German chess players Chess Olympiad competitors {{SouthAfrica-chess-bio-stub