Who was Bobby Fischer’s father? Was it Dr.

Paul Nemenyi or Hans-Gerhardt

Fischer? Robert James Fischer’s surname could just as easily have been Nemenyi or
Wender.

Paul Felix Nemenyi (ne-MEN-yi) was born on June 5, 1895 in

Fiume/Rijeka, Croatia. He was a Jewish Hungarian physicist specializing in fluid
dynamics. From 1912 to 1918 he studied at the Polytechnical school in Budapest. He
had to leave Hungary where anti-Semitic laws had been enacted. In 1922, he obtained
is Doctor of Science degree in Berlin and lectured on engineering at the Technical
University of Berlin. In 1927, his son Peter (1927-2002), was born in Berlin.In the
early 1930s, he published a textbook on mechanics that would be required reading in
German universities. In 1933, he was sacked from his university duties because he
was a Jew when the Nazis came to power. He was arrested on April 1, 1933 by SS
troops for making “calumnious statements” against Hitler’s government. He was
jailed for one day, then released because of the lack of evidence. Nemenyi belonged
to a small Socialist party called the ITSK.

In 1934, he found work in Copenhagen, settling in a farm village on redistributed

noble landholdings in Denmark. His wife fled to Paris and died some time later. He
then went to Britain. He resettled in a collective of unemployed coal miners in an
abandoned factory and manor in Wales. In the fall of 1938, he arrived in the USA to
find a job. He left his son, Peter, behind in various Quakers’ homes and young refugee
hostals in the United Kingdom. He visited Princeton to consult with Albert Einstein
and gave his resume to the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign
Scholars. The committee wrote in its files that Dr. Paul Nemenyi was an unstable and
undesirable person. Dr. Theodore von Karman, a fellow Hungarian and leading
aeronautical scientist, also proclaimed Nemenyi a misfit.

After being recommended by Albert Einstein, he took part in hydraulic research at

the State University of Iowa, working for Albert Einstein’s son, Hans-Albert. In late
1941, he was appointed instructor at the University of Colorado and taught college
freshman mathematics for $165 a month. He was an animal-rights support and
refused to wear wool. In the winter, he wore pajamas underneath his clothes to stay
warm and refused to wear a suit and tie.

Dr von Karman wrote about Nemenyi, “When he came to this country, he went to
scientific meetings in an open shirt without a tie and was very much disappointed as I
advised him to dress as anyone else. He told me that he thought this was a country of
freedom, and the man is only judged according to his internal values and not his
external appearance.”
In 1942, Dr. Paul Nemenyi, age 47, met Regina Wender Fischer (1913-1997), age 29,
in Denver, according to FBI files. Regina was taking classes at
the University of Denver while working at a company that made chicken
incubators. She was a mother of a 5-year-old girl, Joan Fischer. Her husband, Hans-
Gerhardt Fischer, was in Santiago, Chile. He was barred by immigration authorities
from entering the United States. Paul met Regina at the University of Denver.

In 1942, Nemenyi told colleagues that he preferred communism to

capitalism. Regina may have had the same preference. The FBI suspected Regina of
communist sympathies after a babysitter found what she believed to be pro-
communist letters from Chile belonging to her, then turned them over to the FBI after
calling them. In the summer of 1942, Dr. Paul Nemenyi and Regina Fischer were
romantically linked, probably had an affair, and he may have fathered Bobby
Fischer. He did provide some financial support for Regina and the baby.

In 1942, the Encyclopedia Britannica commissioned Dr. Nemenyi to write an article

on theoretical mechanics. The article was later rejected.

By 1943, Regina moved to Chicago and Paul Nemenyi moved to Rhode Island to
teach.
Bobby Fischer was born on March 9, 1943, but Paul Nemenyi’s name was not on the
birth certificate. Regina gave birth to her son alone, in a clinic for poor single mothers
(Michael Reese Hospital). On the birth certificate, she listed Hans-Gerhard Fischer as
the father. She briefly considered putting Bobby Fischer up for adoption, but decided
not to after talking to a social worker. Regina then moved into a Chicago home for
fatherless families. At one time, she was arrested at this home and charged with
disturbing the peace (she encouraged other mothers to question the institution’s rules),
but was acquitted. A court-ordered psychological exam found here to be paranoid.

From 1944 to 1947, Paul Nemenyi was an instructor at the State College of
Washington (now Washington State University in Pullman, Washington). He also
worked at Hanford, Washington on the Manhattan Project working on a mechanism
which triggered the atomic bomb. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer may have helped Paul get
work at Hanford. Peter Nemenyi joined his father, but was later drafted and served in
Northern Italy, outside Trieste.

In 1947, he was appointed physicist with the Naval Ordinance laboratory in White
Oak, Maryland. He was head of the theoretical mechanics section of the
laboratory. He was one of the world’s leading authorities on elasticity and fluid
dynamics.
Dr. Nemenyi took a deep interest in Bobby Fischer and even paid child support
to Regina. At one time, in 1947, when Bobby was 3, he complained to a social
worker about the way Regina was raising Bobby. He told the caseworker
that Regina was mentally upset and Bobby was an upset child.

In 1947, an informant told the FBI that Paul Nemenyi remarked that the Soviet system
was superior to that of the United States.

In 1949, Dr. Paul Nemenyi went to a social worker again, complaining that his son
was not being brought up in desirable circumstances, due to the instability of Regina.

In 1951, he wrote a review of the Encyclopedia Britannica for The New Republic and
declared it out of date.

Dr. Paul Nemenyi died of a heart attack on March 1, 1952, at the age of 56. He had
just stopped at a dance at the International Student House in Washington, DC. There,
he dropped dead of a heart attack. He was living in Washington, DC, and working at
the U.S. Naval Research Lab. He was survived by his son, Peter , a civil-rights
activist. Peter wrote that his father, Paul, was the father of Bobby Fischer.

At the time of his death, Paul was paying for 8-year-old Bobby’s education and
sending $20 a week to Regina.

When Nemenyi died, he had an envelope full of letters. The police turned these
letters over to the FBI. In one of the letters, a female friend wrote that he (Paul)
should not spend too much time worrying about Peter and Bobby. She wrote, “I am
sorry that you have so many sorrows with your children.”

At the time of Nemenyi’s death, Regina was in nursing school in Brooklyn, broke,
and facing eviction.

Photos of Paul Nemenyi bear a striking physical resemblance to Bobby Fischer (see
picture). The FBI file described Dr. Nenemyi “as having a large nose, large knobby
fingers, and an awkward, slovenly walk and dress.”

When Dr. Paul Nemenyi died, Regina Fischer wrote to Peter Nemenyi, who was
attending Black Mountain College in Ashville, NC. “Bobby has not had a decent
meal at home this past month and was sick for two days with fever and sore throat
and, of course, a doctor or medicine was out of the question. I don’t think Paul would
have wanted to leave Bobby this way and would ask you most urgently to let me
know if Paul left anything for Bobby. Bobby is still expecting Paul.” She also wrote
that she could not afford to patch his torn shoes.

Regina did not want to tell Bobby of Paul Nemenyi’s death and was hoping that Peter
Nemenyi would do it. He was not comfortable with that, so he consulted a family
doctor for advice. He wrote to his family doctor, “I take it you know that Paul was
Bobby Fischer’s father. The matter is further complicated by the false pretenses about
Bobby’s identity and the parents’ difference of opinion over the question.” Peter felt
he was not qualified to tell Bobby about Paul’s death since Peter had met Bobby only
a few times.

In 1963, Peter Nemenyi received his Doctorate in mathematics from Princeton in

1963.

In the 1960s, Bobby’s half-brother, Peter Nemenyi, was beaten and arrested while
trying to help black voters in Mississippi and trying to integrate coffee shops. In
2002, Peter killed himself in Durham, NC, at the age of 75, after suffering from
prostrate cancer.

In 2002, an article by Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson of The Philadelphia Inguirer
suggests that Nemenyi may be the biological father of Bobby Fischer. Through the
Freedom of Information Act, they were able to obtain a 750-page file (file 100-
102290) that the FBI had on Regina Fischer.

An FBI report claimed that both Hans-Gerhardt Fischer and Dr, Paul Nemenyi
harbored Soviet sympathies.

Hans-Gerhardt (sometimes written as Gerard or Gerhard) Fischer was born on

September 28, 1908 in Berlin, Germany. He was a Jew and worked in Berlin in the
early 1930s, where he met Regina Wender, whose father, Jacob (Jack) Wender, was a
Polish dress cutter. Hans and Regina moved to Moscow in 1933 and were married
in Moscow on November 4, 1933. She was 20, he was 25. He was a biophysicist and
may have fought the Fascists in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. She was studying
medicine at the First Moscow Medical Institute and he was studying
biophysics. Regina stayed for a year in medical school but never graduated. Quitting
school, she worked as a riveter in a defense plant in the Soviet Union.

Their first born child, Joan Fischer, was born in Moscow in 1938. She died in 1998.

In 1939, Regina and Hans left Moscow together and traveled first to Austria.
In 1939, Regina Fischer returned to the United States with her daughter, Joan. She
was born in Switzerland but raised in St. Louis, Missouri and was a naturalized
American citizen. She caught one of the last ships leaving France for America. It is
not clear if Hans-Gerhardt was on this ship. The FBI does say that Hans-Gerhardt
Fischer never entered the United States from any ship (was he a suspected Soviet
spy?). The FBI file says that Hans Gerhardt Fischer lived for a time in Port San
Antonio, Chile where he sold fluorescent lights and worked as a photographer.

The FBI suspected that Hans might be a Soviet spy targeting Nazis in South
America. In one letter to Regina, he made what the FBI called a cryptic reference to
photographing fisherman (Nazis?) at a Chilean port. During that time, several
German agents had been arrested there, posing as fisherman.

Regina later divorced Hand-Gerhardt in 1945. He never lived with her in the United
States. He remained a lifelong German citizen.

Bobby Fischer’s only public statement about his father appeared in Start,
a Zagreb newspaper. “My father left my mother when I was two. I have never seen
him. My mother has only told me that his name was Gerhardt and that he was of
German descent.” Fischer once said, “Children who miss a parent become wolves.”

Later, Bobby Fischer told a friend that he and Joan did not have the same father. Joan
Fischer Targ always insisted that her father’s name was Hans-Gerhardt Fischer.

Hans-Gerhardt Fischer died on Febuary 25, 1993 in Berlin, Germany.

Regina Wender was born on march 31, 1913 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Regina Wender Fischer Pustin died of cancer on July 27, 1997 at the age of 84 in
the Stanford University Hospital.