While still a student, he became a member of a secret organization headed by Carl Ludwig Reichenbach (1788–1869) that had designs on establishing a colony on Tahiti (Otaheiti-Gesellschaft).
Later on, he spent six months as a teacher in a private institution in Erlangen, and afterwards was a tutor for four years in the house of the Minister of Altenstein in Thuringia.
At Esslingen, together with Ernst Gottlieb von Steudel (1783–1856), he organised Unio Itineraria (Württembergischer botanische Reiseverein).
[5] Hochstetter published numerous works on botany, mineralogy and natural history as well as on theology and education.
With Steudel, he published Enumeratio plantarum Germaniae Helvetiaeque indigenarum, a book covering botanical species of Germany and Switzerland and with Moritz August Seubert (1818–1878), he published Flora Azorica, a treatise on the flora of the Azores.