with kind permission from Ulrich Tamm
In 1878 and 1879, as already reported in the chapter about the Bielefeld Chess Club, two correspondence games between the chess clubs in Bielefeld and Gütersloh are documented.
Later, problems from Gütersloh chess players were occasionally published in Kockelkorn's chess column in the Kölner Sonntagsblatt - for example, on September 11th, 1881 a problem by W. Greve and on March 19th, 1882 a problem by W. Vogt. So these two could very well have been involved in the correspondence. A W. Vogt also won a correspondence tournament in the Tägliche Rundschau in 1885 - see newspaper clipping in the chapter on chess in Minden.
The next mention of a Gütersloh chess player came in 1905, in which Dodt (Gütersloh) became a prize winner with 2 wins from 2 games in the youth tournament of the Lower Rhine Chess Association on the occasion of the Barmen Congress.
Dodt seems to have been quite active, as he later took part in the congress of the Lower Elbish Chess Federation in Hanover, where he won one of the side tournaments (Deutsches Wochenschach, September 22, 1907). In the German weekly chess of May 16, 1909 there is still mention of a competition in Gütersloh between M. Dodt and cand. theol. A. Unger reports that Dodt won with +5, -2, = 3.
His name can also be found unchanged from 1908 to 1920 in Ranneforth's chess calendar under “Gütersloh: Chess Circle of the High School with E. Bartmann, Moltkestr; Sat and Sun 1 – 4; Chairman M. Dodt”. However, the chess competition probably fell asleep at some point and was no longer included in the chess calendar.
In 1923, today's Gütersloh Chess Club was founded following newspaper advertisements by E. Schmidt. A reference to M. Dodt or the chess circle is not documented.
The best players in the 1920s were Otto Hofert and E. Borries, as noted in a Volkswacht column.
As part of the national advertising events in 1933, a second club was founded in Gütersloh under the name Königsspringer. Both clubs regularly took part in the team and individual tournaments of the Ravensberg Chess Circle before they merged in 1939. With Ludwig Krettek, the city of Gütersloh also provided the East Westphalia champion in 1938. Wilhelm Esselbrügge, who also had a regular place in the Ravensberg Chess Circle selection team, was almost equally strong.
After 1945, the Gütersloh Chess Club did not play a significant role for a long time. That only changed in the mid-1980s with the arrival of Bundesliga veteran Hans-Werner Ackermann. He strongly influenced the next generation around Bernhard Sadlowski, Michael Kretschmann, Frank Bellers and Stefan Hanhörster.
At that time, an old master who had previously retired from tournament chess for a long time also played for Gütersloh: Ludwig Röver. He was the German Cup winner in 1954 and a participant in the German youth individual championships in the 1950s as well as the city champion of Münster.