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General Government chess tournament

Events in Nazi-occupied Poland (1942–44)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 29, 2024
Entity authorityQ4244695 ↗
Source-derived summary

General Government chess championships (Schachmeisterschaft des Generalgouvernements) were Nazi tournaments held during World War II in occupied central Poland. Hans Frank, the Governor-General of General Government, was the patron of those tournaments because he was an avid chess player.

The competition began when he organized a chess congress in Kraków on 3 November 1940. Six months later Frank announced the establishment of a chess school under Chess grandmasters, Yefim Bogolyubov and Alexander Alekhine.

Historical context

A number of Polish chess players were arrested in January 1940. Jewish players were killed by Germans, e.g. Dawid Przepiórka. Ethnic Poles didn't participate in the tournaments.

Participants

Alexander Alekhine Russia/France

Efim Bogoljubow Ukraine/Germany

Paul Felix Schmidt Estonia/Germany

Klaus Junge Chile/Germany

Karl Gilg Czechoslovakia/Germany

Josef Lokvenc Austria/Germany

Hans Müller Austria/Germany

Wolfgang Weil Austria/Germany

Paul Mross Poland/Germany

Teodor Regedziński Poland/Germany

Leon Tuhan-Baranowski Poland/Germany

Fedir Bohatyrchuk Ukraine/Soviet Union

and other German players /Germany.

Regedziński played as Theodore Reger, and Tuhan-Baranowski as Lisse.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “General Government chess tournament” is events in Nazi-occupied Poland (1942–44). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through General, Government and chess, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, General, Government and chess is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “events in Nazi-occupied Poland (1942–44)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 29, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q4244695. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1940.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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  2. Expand the search: follow General Government chess tournament primary sources, General Government chess tournament archive and General research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “General Government chess tournament” 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.