Walter Czollek

Walter Czollek (8 April 190723 April 1972) was the head of the East German publishing house Verlag Volk und Welt between 1954 and 1972.

In 1929, as a young man, he joined the Communist Party. He was detained in a succession of prisons and concentration camps between 1933 and 1939, at which point he was deprived of his citizenship. By 1939 it was no longer so easy as it had been earlier in the decade for Germany's political refugees to find refuge elsewhere in Europe, but he was able to emigrate to China where he supported himself with journalistic and translation work between 1939 and 1947.

Life Walter Czollek was born in the Charlottenburg quarter of Berlin into a German-Jewish family. His father was a businessman. He had a conventional schooling, attending a Gymnasium (secondary school) locally and successfully completing his School final exams ("Abitur"). However, instead of progressing directly to university, in 1924 he embarked on a commercial apprenticeship, mastering the production and processing of artificial silk fabrics. He continued to work in the business till 1933.

He was eventually released and expelled from Germany in May 1939. He arrived in Shanghai on 17 July 1939, and met by Max Lewinsohn and Alfred Dreifuss. Czollek was found a room in an apartment in Ward Road. Through Dreifuss he was introduced to Richard Paulick who operated what amounted to a "political salon" at the heart of a small but committed community of exiled German communists. Between 1939 and 1941 he headed up an illegal radio station on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, also carrying out tasks for a Soviet news and information service, while also supporting himself by working in various chemicals companies. Up till 1945 he was passing military information to various news agencies. Between 1939 and 1947 he also worked as a translator and radio presenter for the German language TASS station "Voice of the Soviet Union in Shanghai" ("Stimme der Sowjetunion in Shanghai").

During 1952 he attended a course at the party's "Walter Ulbricht" Academy for National Administration ("... Akademie für Staats- und Rechtswissenschaft"), after which he became deputy head of the "Verlag Volk und Welt". In 1954 he succeeded Bruno Peterson as head ("Verlagsleiter") of the operation, a position he retained for eighteen years till his death in 1972.

Honour 1967 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver