WGM Josefine Heinemann
Bio
Josefine Heinemann is a German woman grandmaster, a multiple German youth champion in several age groups, a member of the German national team, and since 2022 also an Olympic participant.
In classical chess, Heinemann has long been one of the strongest female chess players in Germany and plays regularly in the Chess.com Titled Tuesday tournaments under her username JosefineHeinemann.
Early Life And Career
Heinemann was born in 1998 in the city of Gardelegen, which is roughly halfway between Hanover and Berlin.
At the age of seven, she learned to play chess and just one year later she became the under-eight champion of the state of Saxonia-Anhalt.
In 2013, Heinemann won the German championship in the under-16 division for women, and two years later she repeated her success in the under-18 division.
Woman Grandmaster
Heinemann achieved her first WGM norm in 2015 as an untitled player at the Czech Open in Pardubice. A year later she became a woman international master (WIM) and was ready to tackle the WGM title.
Heinemann achieved the second norm required for this in 2018 at the Grenke Open in Karlsruhe, Germany, and the third and last one at the German Masters for women just a few months later. Because she had long surpassed the Elo rating of 2300, which is also required for the title, Heinemann was elected as a woman grandmaster at the FIDE Congress in the Georgian city of Batumi on October 6, 2018.
In the same year, Heinemann then won at the Isle of Man Open against chess legend GM Pia Cramling and thus for the first time in her life a classical game against a grandmaster.
Recent Years
After numerous appearances at World and European championships for the German women's national team among others, she was part of the team that won the Mitropa Cup in 2016. Heinemann took part in a Chess Olympiad for the first time in 2022 with the German women's team that shared sixth place.
Also in 2022, Heinemann became the German women's team champion with her team OSG Baden-Baden. At the Bavarian Open Championships in Bad Wiessee, she won the women's prize ahead of her national team colleague WGM Jana Schneider and Austria's WFM Denise Trippold.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Heinemann also discovered online chess and has regularly competed in Titled Tuesday tournaments on Chess.com with growing success.
In the Pro Chess League 2023, also held online, she played for the team Berlin Bears. What was initially only intended as a little pastime and at best as an option to compete with some of the best players has made her one of the most famous female chess players in the world. In her very first game, she faced GM Hikaru Nakamura, and after 37 moves the American superstar resigned.
Although Heinemann had already defeated several grandmasters in online blitz games, various Titled Tuesday tournaments, and over-the-board tournaments, this victory in front of a huge audience against the then number-six in the world rankings was amazing. In this YouTube video, Nakamura shows how Heinemann beat him.
Social Media Activities
In addition to her homepage josefine-schach.de and her profile on Instagram, Heinemann has been working on a long-cherished dream since the beginning of 2023: Her own YouTube channel.
There she now regularly publishes videos in the German language that show the best games by German chess players and sometimes bonus videos on topics such as opening principles or chess rules she would like to change. (Spoiler alert: Like GM Levon Aronian, she is not a huge fan of the option, that players can resign a game.)
Further, Heinemann has discovered the Twitch platform and runs the channel Frauenschachexperten (women chess experts) with her friends GM Elisabeth Pähtz and WIM Lara Schulze. When she's not busy working to be a grandmaster, you can watch Heinemann there every Tuesday when she takes on some of the best grandmasters in the world on Chess.com.
