Paul Baender
German-Bolivian chess player (1906-1985)
Paul Baender, also known in Spanish as Pablo Baender (30 November 1906 – 18 December 1985), was a German–Bolivian chess player and functionary.
Born in Rosdzin, now part of Katowice, Upper Silesia, he moved to Görlitz in 1921. When Nazis came to power in 1933, Baender, being a Jew, fled to Prague, Czechoslovakia. In November 1937, he emigrated to La Paz, Bolivia. Baender played for Bolivia in the 8th Chess Olympiad at Buenos Aires 1939.
After World War II, he came back to Germany (Soviet occupation zone) in 1947. He became a communist politician (Staatssekretär in 1950–1952) in German Democratic Republic, and also the President of the GDR Chess Federation (Präsident des Deutschen Schachbunds) until 1953. Baender was arrested on 15 December 1952 during a stalinist purge with antisemitic ressentiments. After Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech to the delegates to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow, he was freed in 1956. Baender died in 1985 in Berlin.
The public source identifies “Paul Baender” as german-Bolivian chess player (1906-1985). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Paul, Baender and German-Bolivian.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q105585. VIAF identifies the subject as 64808578. The Library of Congress control number is n92003281. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1985, 1921 and 1933.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Baender” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.