Fritz Baumbach

Fritz Baumbach, 2008
Association	Germany
Born	September 8, 1935 Weimar , German Empire
title	Correspondence Chess Grandmaster (1973) FIDE Master (1985)
Current  Elo rating	2127 (April 2020)
Best Elo rating	2460 (July 1971)
Tab at the FIDE (English)

Friedrich "Fritz" Baumbach (born September 8, 1935 in Weimar ) is a German correspondence chess player . In 1988 he became world champion correspondence chess.

Correspondence chess

At the 4th World Correspondence Chess Championship, Baumbach made it into the 1958/61 Candidates Tournament. He then took part in the 5th and 6th Chess Olympiad for the GDR  , where he achieved an IM standard each time. 1967 for the world correspondence chess association awarded him ICCF title International Master in correspondence chess .

He received the title of Grand Master in 1973 after he reached second place in the Lenin Memorial Tournament (1970-1973). Because of this success, the ICCF saved him the way through the normal qualification and allocated him a free place for the final of the 9th World Championship. Here he was runner-up behind Tõnu Õim in 1983 without defeat , and even world champion in 1988 at the 11th World Cup. For this title he was honored as Honored Master of Sports in the GDR .

The course of the 10th Correspondence Chess Olympiad, in which Baumbach took part with the GDR team, was curious. The final began in 1987 and ended in 1995, that is, a GDR team played for several years after reunification , although the GDR no longer existed. Incidentally, the same applied to the participants from the Soviet Union and the CSSR . The GDR team won the bronze medal.

At the 11th Olympiad, which began in 1992, Baumbach again took part with a German team. In 1999 this team became Olympic champions.

At the 50th anniversary tournament of the ICCF world champions , he took fourth place.

His rating in correspondence chess is 2421 (as of December 2018).

Tournament chess

Baumbach is also a strong player on the board. In 1951 he was with Lichtenberg youth team champion of the GDR. In 1961 he finished third in the student world championship. He finished second in the GDR championship in 1968, and in 1970 he won the title of GDR champion in Freiberg.

In the same year he also took part in the Chess Olympiad in Siegen with the GDR team. He was registered on the second reserve board and won his three games in the preliminary round, and drew three times in the final round, including against the former world champion Smyslow with the black pieces.

At the European team championship in 1970 in Kapfenberg , he reached third place with the GDR. For his tournament success on the board, he received the title of FIDE Master . During the GDR era he played for TSC Oberschöneweide or its successor TSC Berlin , DAW Berlin and AdW Berlin and won the GDR team championship seven times. He currently plays in the team of SC Friesen Lichtenberg, until the 2011/12 season in the Oberliga Nord. In the Swedish Elitserien he was used in the 2002/03 season for Lunds ASK .

The functionary

Fritz Baumbach, June 1993 at the correspondence chess meeting at Schluchsee (tournament simultaneous)

Baumbach was president of the German Fernschachbund e. V. (BdF) . From 1995 to 1999 he was Secretary General of the ICCF .

During his tenure as President of the German Correspondence Chess Federation, it lost around two thirds of its members (from 8,000 after German reunification to under 3,000 in 2005). At the end of 2010, Baumbach resigned in the middle of his last election period.

From 1970 he trained deaf chess players in the GDR for almost twenty years and, as a coach, led the national team to a second place at the team world championship of the Deaf World Chess Federation in Denmark in 1974.

Private

Baumbach is a chemist by profession. He received his doctorate in 1966 with the topic The effect of hydrazine hydrate on substituted pyrimidines . After completing his doctorate, he completed a three-year patent engineering course at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Berlin and then worked there in the patent system for biochemistry and genetic engineering. Since 2000 he has been working as a freelance patent attorney.

Baumbach has five children - a son and four daughters.

Awards

• In May 2002 the German Chess Federation expressed its gratitude and recognition in the form of an honorary certificate.
• Fritz Baumbach was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in 2011 .

Controversy

• When he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, the statement he made that deaf people lagged behind in their intellectual development and that this is also noticeable when playing chess was criticized in March 2012 by the German Deaf Association as "discriminatory and insulting". The German Chess Federation distanced itself from Baumbach's statement.

• In a specialist article in the KARL magazine , Baumbach wrote about his predecessor as correspondence chess world champion Horst Rittner , who also came from the GDR, that he was "not a very good local chess player" and that "in this respect [...] he had damaged the reputation of correspondence chess". In the same article he indirectly accused Rittner of using the training group, which Baumbach also belonged to as a student, to analyze his long-distance games. His remarks about Rittner were criticized in correspondence chess circles, which is why Uwe Bekemann from the board of the German Correspondence Chess Federation issued a relativizing statement in the following KARL magazine.

Works

• Correspondence chess: 52-54-stop. Tips and tricks from the world champion (with the assistance of Heinrich Burger ). Sportverlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-328-00398-3 .
• The chess clock is running, your move please (together with Wolfgang Thormann). Sportverlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-328-00598-6 .
• Gladiators ante Portas: Massow Memorial (together with Volker-Michael Anton ). Magdeburg 2003, ISBN 3-00-012366-0 .
• Who is the champion of the champions? (together with Robin Smith and Rolf Knobel). Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-935800-04-4 .

literature

• Volker Kluge :  Baumbach, Fritz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Fritz Baumbach  - Collection of Images

• Fritz Baumbach at the World Correspondence Chess Federation ICCF (English)
• Literature by and about Fritz Baumbach in the catalog of the German National Library
• Patent attorney Dr. Friedrich Baumbach
• Baumbach at the "Emanuel Lasker Society" (with photos) (accessed on September 8, 2012)
• "Checkmate by snail mail" (article in the Tagesspiegel of November 11, 2000)
• Replayable chess games by Fritz Baumbach on chessgames.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz Baumbach, Robin Smith, Rolf Knobel: Who is the Champion of the Champions? - Correspondence Chess. Excelsior Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-935800-04-4 , p. 87 (articles partly in German, partly in English).
2. ↑ Hans Moritz: A draw after five years and eleven days. In: Märkische Oderzeitung . 29./30. January 2011, p. 7.
3. ↑ ICCF ratings
4. ↑ Baumbach, Friedrich (East Germany) on OlimpBase (English).
5. ↑ Friedrich Baumbach's results at European team championships on OlimpBase.org (English).
6. ↑ Honorary certificates of the German Chess Federation on the occasion of the 125th anniversary.
7. ^ Federal Cross of Merit for Fritz Baumbach ( Memento from July 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: berlinerschachverband.de. February 23, 2012, accessed April 14, 2018 (report).
8. ↑ Statement on the statement of the world chess champion Dr. Fritz Baumbach. In: gehoerlosen-bund.de. March 9, 2012, accessed April 14, 2018.
9. ↑ German Chess Federation wants to delete discrimination from website. ( Memento from March 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: behindertensport-news.de. March 7, 2012, accessed March 15, 2018.
10. ↑ (Updated version :) Statement on the statement of the world chess champion Dr. Fritz Baumbach ( Memento from June 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: gehoerlosen-bund.de. March 9, 2012, updated on March 12, 2012, accessed on April 14, 2018 (contains the update on the deletion of the controversial statements on the websites of the German Correspondence Chess Association, BdF, and the Berlin Chess Association).
11. ↑ CHARLES. Issues 4/2011 and 1/2012.