The Berlin Wall, Hans-Joachim Hecht & Eugene O’Hare

Today is the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall: an important event in the lives of many and in world history, but you’re probably thinking that it could have no conceivable direct connection to Irish chess history.

But you’d be wrong!

In 1974, the Irish Times Easter tournament, an 8-player all-play-all event in Dublin, resulted in a runaway win for Hans-Joachim Hecht of West Germany, ahead of Peter Jamieson (Scotland), Michael Littleton, Paul Henry, Wolfgang Heidenfeld, Hugh MacGrillen, Ron Harris (England), and Bernard Kernan. Hecht, who had become a GM the previous year, finished a clear 2 points ahead of the field.

He was born in 1939 in Luckenwalde, in what later became the DDR. So how did it happen that he later represented West Germany?

The answer is contained in an excellent book Roast Beef on Sunday (Oriel Press, 2008), the memoirs of Eugene O’Hare, 1918-2008, six-time Ulster champion. O’Hare was on the Olympiad teams of Leipzig 1960, Varna 1962, and Tel Aviv 1964. In Leipzig, the Irish team had met Frau Hecht, who introduced her son. When they met again in Varna (Bulgaria) in 1962, Hecht was already on the West German team, as first reserve. Frau Hecht explained that while her son was living at home in the Soviet zone, he worked at Templehof airport in the American sector. On the night the Berlin Wall went up he had been on late duty. If he had returned home he would have to stay, so he elected to remain where he was.