HO chess center

The HO Schachzentrum was a branch of the GDR state trade organization HO in Leipzig . The branch mainly sold chess items and was the first chess item dealer in the GDR .

The reason for the foundation on October 14, 1961 was the 1960 Chess Olympiad in Leipzig. The model for the design of the shop was Erwin Rosenblatt's chess shop on Wenceslas Square in Prague . The first director was Hildegard Richter; she was followed by Susanne Pausch and Elke Hoppert until 1989. After the reunification, the business was taken over by Euro Schach und Spiel (today Euro Schach Dresden), but it was finally closed after just one year.

The HO chess center had trade relationships with over thirty suppliers. Figure material was obtained, for example, from the Ore Mountains (Borstendorf, Eppendorf, Seiffen); Chess clocks were manufactured by VEB Uhrenwerke Ruhla . Most of the chess books came from Sportverlag Berlin . Most of the turnover was not generated by the shop in Leipzig's Burgstrasse, but by mail order. The HO Schachzentrum supplied chess players not only in the GDR, but also in 60 countries outside the GDR. Soviet chess magazines were particularly popular in western foreign countries , for example the later world chess champion Bobby Fischer was one of the subscribers for several years.

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• Frank Große: The first chess shop in the GDR , in: Karl, the cultural chess magazine , No. 3/2008, pp. 34–36.