As a teenager, he was caught distributing anti-government leaflets and spent the final months of the National Socialist period serving the first part of a ten year prison sentence.
However, as more former East German political prisoners turned up in West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s, the realities of "Häftlingsfreikauf" became progressively a matter of public knowledge.
[5] Hermann Kreutzer was born into a politicised family in Saalfeld, a small industrial town in Thuringia, south of Erfurt and Weimar.
[7] As a teenager he took part in "leafleting actions", which involved distributing political material produced by or for the illegal SPD in Saalfeld.
[8] [6] In March 1945, still aged only 17, he was arrested by the authorities, found guilty of "Wehrkraftzersetzung" (undermining the war effort), and sentenced to a ten year jail term.
Interviewed a year before his death, Kreutzer would recall with satisfaction that he had managed to complete his escape and return home without a shot being fired.
[6] In July 1945, Kreutzer and his father, Paul, met Walter Ulbricht, who later, as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, became East Germany's first leader.
In his 2006 interview, Kreutzer would recall receiving a friendly warning from another future East German leader at a Youth Seminar in Camburg.
[6][b] At the start of April 1946, Hermann Kreutzer and his father cycled over to Weimar in response to an invitation they had received to attend a lunch with other prominent politicians and activists.
The invitation came from the Soviet military administrators in the region: lunch was to be served in the "officers' casino" at the Hotel Empress Augusta.
For Kreutzer and other Social Democrats present, Hoffman's action was an appalling betrayal, but as soon as Hoffmann sat down the Soviet general next to him stood up: "We wish to toast the unity".
On the other side of the table the communist lunch guests now stood up, as one, and sang a verse extolling party unity from the song (originally a poem by the revolutionary poet Leonid Petrowitsch Radin), "Brothers, towards the sunshine, towards freedom".
The two of them had been friends since before the memorable occasion in 1933 when, aged 9 and 10, they had celebrated Hitler's successes by together discovering Kreutzer's uncle's wine collection.
So at night, with others, he now began to make his way through the streets of the town, sticking to the walls posters condemning the merger of the Communist and Social Democratic parties.
He would pass information about the party merger and the arrests being made in order to enforce it through the still porous border West Berlin-based press contacts.
[8] On 31 August, with his father, his fiancée (who had been working as a typist for the town council) and three other Social Democrat activists, he faced a Soviet military tribunal which was persuaded of his guilt in respect of "anti-Soviet propaganda", "counter-revolutionary activities" and "socialist breach of faith.
[2] In the end, there was nothing particularly quiet about the press conference Kreutzer called in West Berlin in order to demand that Dorothée should also be released.
The ministry's responsibilities and priorities changed over time, but its essential focus was on the endlessly changeable, complex and sensitive relationship between the government's West and East Germany.
Kreutzer was given charge of administering the so-called "Häftlingsfreikauf" programme, which involved East German political prisoners being released to West Germany in return for large amounts of cash.
[12] In April 1979 Hermann Kreutzer went public with his belief that West Germany was playing host to between 10,000 and 12,000 people whom he identified as "agents of influence" ("Einflussagenten"), operating on behalf of the East German ruling party and occupying positions that enabled them to affect West German decision makers, notably within the SPD, the trades unions and the churches.
[14] When he went on to identify certain parliamentarians as "agents of influence", formal "Administrative Oversight Complaints" ("Dienstaufsichtsbeschwerde") were lodged against him at the Ministry for Intra-German Relations, in which at this stage he was still employed.
A party exclusion commission produced conclusions against Kreutzer which one source, unpersuaded by his allegations, identified as unexpectedly lenient.
[5] During 1980 Kreutzer went public and personal with criticisms of party leader, ex-chancellor Brandt whose policy towards East Germany Ostpolitik he thought at best naïf.
Shortly before the 1980 general election Hermann Kreutzer made a public appeal to voters to back the opposition CDU (party) with their votes.
He re-organised the Kurt Schumacher Circle which now became part of the "Gesellschaft für soziale Demokratie e. V." ("Society for Social Democracy") which had been founded in 1982.
He also co-wrote a biography of Marlene Dietrich, which was published in 2001 in which he held out the singer-actress as a consistent and uncompromising opponent of National Socialism.