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Giant Chess board and players at the Hirschgarten Park in Munich, Germany, June 2018
Chess "is diverse and inclusive," the German Chess Federation said in rejecting calls for a ban on trans competitors.
In competitive chess, where the clash of queens and bishops usually eclipses cultural warfare, a teenage girl has found herself at the center of Germany’s latest front in the debate over transgender women’s inclusion in sports.
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Nora Heidemann, 17, a trans girl from North Rhine-Westphalia, made history this month by winning Germany’s under-18 girls’ chess championship, scoring 7.5 out of nine points and outperforming 27 rivals. Her victory, reported by Apollo News, a German political news outlet, and later detailed in The Times of London, has triggered a fierce conversation over who belongs in women’s competitions — even in pursuits where brainpower, not physical power, rules the day.
Heidemann’s competed in the open U18 division at her state-level event but failed to qualify directly, according to Apollo News. Her legal gender change was finalized only after the deadline for girls’ registration had passed. Ultimately, she secured one of five discretionary “free places,” awarded based on performance ratings, not gender identity, the outlet reports.
Still, her win has fueled skepticism from some quarters of the German chess community. Nadja Jussupow, head of the German Commission for Women’s Chess and a former champion, stated that more trans women have been entering women’s tournaments since Germany’s Self-Determination Act took effect in 2021. The Times reports that she claimed some cisgender women players were considering quitting, fearing unfair competition.
Jussupow suggested a one-year waiting period for newly legally recognized trans women before competing in women’s categories, a proposal that reportedly found support among some women’s chess referees.
The German Chess Federation has rejected any ban, citing Germany’s new legal protections and stressing that “chess is diverse and inclusive.” Federation president Ingrid Lauterbach condemned the discriminatory backlash Heidemann has faced on social media, saying, “We’re an inclusive sport and want to be so.”
Internationally, the World Chess Federation imposed a temporary ban in 2023, preventing trans women from women’s tournaments pending further review — a rule Germany opposes, pointing out that a trans woman had already claimed a national women’s title in the early 2000s, Apollo News reports.
