Wolfgang Pauly (born August 15, 1876 in Dohna near Dresden; † March 3, 1934 in Bucharest) was a well-known German-Romanian chess composer.

Important chess composer

Life
When Pauly was six years old, his family moved to Bucharest. Here he later became director of a large Romanian insurance company. In addition to mathematics, in which he was talented, his hobby was initially astronomy; At around 10:30 a.m. on June 14, 1898, he discovered a comet near Messier 4, which was later named Coddington-Pauly after him and the earlier discoverer Edwin Foster Coddington. After retiring from astronomy due to an eye problem, Pauly turned to chess composition. In total, around 5,000 compositions from all areas are known, many of them self-checkmates and fairy-tale chess tasks. Although he was considered a universalist in chess composition, mathematical-systematic motifs such as symmetry and echo games were one of his favorite topics. The Pauly theme (also Perpetuum mobile) is named after him, in which, in a chess problem that can be solved before and after the key, the set game of one position occurs after the key move of the other position.

He was often named, along with William Anthony Shinkman and Otto Wurzburg, as one of the three best chess composers of his time.

Pauly was a co-author of several books by A. C. White: The white rooks (1910), The theory of pawn promotion (1912) and Asymmetry (1927).

During the First World War he was sent to a Romanian camp. Here he contracted an illness that plagued him for the rest of his life and as a result of which he died in 1934.

Sources
  Excerpt from a letter from Wolfgang Pauly on June 17, 1898, bibcode:1898AN....146..355.
  Herbert Grasemann: Problem chess. Sportverlag Berlin NW 7. 1955. pp. 37–38.
  Maxwell Bukzofer: Wolfgang Pauly. Obituary in: The Chess Review, May 1934. pp. 91–92.
Literature about Wolfgang Pauly
Meindert Niemeijer: Zo sprak Wolfgang Pauly, 1948 (Dutch)
Marian Stere: Wolfgang Pauly. Challenge of a Legacy. Provocarea unei moșteniri (2001) (Romanian, English, German)

Web links
Compositions by Wolfgang Pauly on the PDB server (1068 chess problems)

Others: On Dutch Website ARVES by Peter Boll (editor) 5 endgame studies by this great chess composer are selected.

These chess studies are all symmetry problems.

A long article published 2001 in the chess problem magazine "Die Schwalbe":

Wolfgang Pauly was born 125 years ago and was described by E. Birgfeld in his obituary in April 1934 as "the greatest and most universal composer of our time." Birgfeld continued:
Pauly, who was born on August 15, 1876 in Dahna near Dresden, was a king in the field of the most economical versions of the New German character, symmetry, self-checkmate and, finally, fairy-tale chess; as a hobby: astronomer who discovered a comet; professionally: director of one of the largest Romanian insurance companies, and as a person: the most loyal, incorruptible friend you can imagine! I often begged him to publish his collection of problems; In his great modesty, he always rejected it: Shinkman's collected work had to be published first, he said; but he had arranged everything well. May his Romanian friends now succeed, together with White, in transmitting and preserving his work to posterity!
The book that Birgfeld had requested immediately after Pauly's death did not come about in the desired manner. It was not until 1948 that M. Niemeijer Zo sprak Wolfgang Pauly published a selection of 170 tasks. In the foreword, Niemeijer places Pauly on an equal footing with Loyd and Shinkman, points to the famous books Sam Loyd and his chess problems (1913) and The golden argosy (1929), dedicated to these composers and edited by A. C. White, and describes it as his intention to create a comparable work to write about Pauly. The project, which began in 1939 in contact with White, dragged on and largely fell victim to the circumstances of the time, and Niemeijer himself says that the war circumstances meant that it did not become what he had intended, but that it was also the time of publication for the publication of a monumental work would not have been cheap.
Pauly was not only a very productive composer - Niemeijer suspects around 2,500 problems, although much higher numbers were also circulating; Pauly documented so many of them himself in a collection that was handed over to Valeriu Onitiu in 1940 and whose fate could no longer be determined - but he also wrote many articles or was involved in them. Of particular note are his contributions to White's books The white rooks (1910), The theory of pawn promotion (1912) and Asymmetry (1927); in the latter he is also named as the author together with T. R. Dawson.

Source: (Die Schwalbe issue 190 August 2001)

Astronomy

Wolfgang Pauly, The First Comet Discoverer of Romania Mircea Pteancu This is the story of Wolfgang Pauly, a gifted mathematician, creator of chess compositions and a keen amateur astronomer who discovered a comet (C/1898 L1) near Messier 4, which came to be credited to him and to Edwin Coddington.

Wolfgang Pauly (August 15, 1876 - March 3, 1934): was born in Dohna, Germany, the son of Heinrich and Sabine (née Zillman). When he was four years old, in 1881, the family left Germany, as his father, who was a mining industrialist, lost his money in financial speculations and decided to seek his fortune in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. Wolfgang, as a boy, studied at the Royal German College, and then at the University of Bucharest, showing a talent for mathematics and a decided interest in astronomy. He became a keen amateur observer. He was also a passionate chess player. (36) In Bucharest, on 1898 June 14, Wolfgang Pauly discovered a comet whilst observing the globular star cluster M4 in the constellation of Scorpius. He used a 75mm aperture Reinfelder refractor telescope. The magnification used was ×28. At the time of the comet's discovery, Wolfgang was approaching the age of 22. His notes of the discovery of the comet, as recounted by himself, are quoted below. The quotation is taken from the article ‘Weitere Nachrichten über den Cometen Coddington-Pauly/ Other news about Comet Coddington-Pauly’ published in Astronomisches Nachrichten.

Words by Wolfgang Pauly

 Discovery

" On June 14 [1898] at 22:30 I was observing with my Reinfelder refractor of 75mm aperture, at the magnification of 28x, the globular cluster GC 4183 (Messier 4) near Antares, when I noticed a small misty spot to the Southwest of it. Not having a complete catalogue of nebulae and not being able to determine if the object was a novelty, I made a sketch framed by the stars of the neighbouring area. On June 15, the sky was unfortunately overcast. Yesterday, on the 16th, from 10 pm to 11 pm, I found that the nebulous object in question could no longer be seen at the noted place, but, after a little searching, I found it to the southwest compared to the previous position.

After 11 o'clock it was cloudy again but at 1 o'clock it cleared enough for me to do again observations. The nebulous object was visible again but with difficulty, and seemed 

to have moved a little to the Southwest. Based on the above, I considered that I was entitled to believe that the object in question was a comet, and I duly notified the Central Office by telegraph. * The comet appeared as a blurry foggy mass, being smaller and dimmer than the star cluster GC 4183 on the 14th, and on the 16th it appeared to have increased in brightness. ‘ (37) the telegram, which immediately revealed the identity of the discovered object with Comet Coddington, arrived here on June 17, at 8 o'clock. in the morning. Mister W. Pauly did not receive the telegrams of the Central Office and, as such, could not be informed of the comet's earlier discovery.’ (38)

The comet had been already discovered, by American astronomer, Edwin Foster Coddington of the Lick Observatory. This observatory is located at an altitude of 1300 metres on Mount Hamilton in the Diablo Range, California. It was the world's first high-altitude astronomical observatory to be permanently occupied. Coddington took a two-hour photograph of the area north of Antares on 1898 June 9, using the 152mm Crocker Photographic Telescope, but the plate was developed only on June 11. The comet was immediately noticed on the plate and confirmed in the evening of the same day and his position measured by Professor Hussey of the same observatory, using the 12-inch refractor. Comet C/1898 L1 (Coddington-Pauly) was only the third comet to be discovered photographically, 

In 1898 Wolfgang Pauly joined the Société Astronomique de France. He was introduced to the society by Mrs. Sylvie Flammarion and Bertaux, at the meeting of May 4, 1898, chaired by Vice President M. Fouche. Pauly was admitted at the June meeting and became member no. 2028. (41) Later, Pauly was working in an insurance company in which he subsequently advanced to the position of Vice President. Pauly continued to use his talent for mathematics to calculate astronomical ephemeris, for example for the asteroid 446 Aethernitas, for the variable star Mira Ceti or for the transit of Mercury...." Extract from a much longer article.

Source: Website astronomy.ro