Emil's father, Albert Walter, was a secondary school teacher originally from Munich, who as a young man had participated actively in the uprisings of 1848.
The boy grew up in an orphanage in the town, and went on to attend the teacher-training academy at nearby Küsnacht between 1887 and 1891.
[1] Between 1908 and 1911 Walter edited Der Grütlianer, the newspaper of the old Grütli Union, originally a wide-ranging workers' rights and welfare organisation which had become progressively more political and tentatively merged with the Swiss Social Democratic Party in 1901 (but would break away again and become a standalone political party in 1916).
Between 1911 and 1920 Walter combined his political duties with work as a secondary school teacher in Zürich.
[2] Emil Walter played an important role in the Winterthur labour movement until he was deselected on account of his attitude to the building workers' strike in 1909 and voted off the council in 1910.