Walter Hochmuth (born 14 February 1904 in Reichenbach im Vogtland, died 28 December 1979 in Berlin) was a German politician in the Weimar Republic (KPD), resistance fighter during the Nazi regime and a diplomat of East Germany.
In 1922, he moved to Düsseldorf, and a little later to Cologne, and worked as a cashier and salesman in the cloth wholesale business of Hugo Braunstein AG.
Since Hochmuth had been a member of the KJVD and the KPD since May 1, 1925, he was transferred to the Hamburg branch of the Tuchhaus Paul Peininger GmbH in 1926, where he later became union chairman.
He began a love affair with one of his lodgers, the tailor's assistant Renate Brake, which resulted in their son Peter in March 1934.
In 1938, Hochmuth was stripped of his German citizenship and deported from the Netherlands to Belgium as an "undesirable person" after he had already been interned from March to June of that year.
After the German troops had also occupied southern France, Hochmuth was arrested by the Gestapo (via Wehrmacht) and imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison in March 1943.
After the president of the Oberpostdirektion Schwerin had fled to the western zones, Hochmuth was removed from the personnel manager function "due to a lack of vigilance" and became an procurator at the Deutsche Handelsgesellschaft in March 1949, and in 1950 finally group leader in the GDR government chancellery, main office administration.
In 1964, Hochmuth moved to the Ministry of the Interior and was initially deputy head of the Deutsches Zentralarchiv (DZA) (the East German Central Archives) in Potsdam.
After a lengthy illness, in 1965 he succeeded Karl Schirdewan as head of the State Archives Administration in Potsdam, where he also lived in the meantime.
[1] In addition to other awards, Hochmuth received the Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in silver in 1960 and in gold in 1974, and in 1979 the clasp of honor for the Patriotic Order of Merit.