Walter Trautzsch

Walter Trautzsch (16 March 1903 – 23 September 1971) was a German political activist who engaged as an anti-fascist resistance fighter during the Hitler years. Between 1936 and his arrest in 1939 he worked secretly as a courier for the Communist Party leader, Ernst Thälmann.

(Although Thälmann was being held in solitary confinement, he was able to receive parcels and visits from his wife, and indeed had a larger than average cell to facilitate visits: they conversed, in part, by writing messages in chalk on a board in order to thwart listening devices. )

Life Provenance and early years Walter Ehrengott Trautzsch was born in Lengefeld, a small industrial town in the mining region south of Chemnitz, and close to the frontier with Bohemia. His parents worked in the weaving trade. His father is also described as a building worker in at least one source. On leaving school, Walter Trautzch successfully completed an apprenticeship in industrial metal forming (als "Metalldrücker"), which was the trade from which he would earn his living, working in various German towns and cities, till 1929. )

During this time he teamed up with other communist political exiles from Germany who had managed to find their way to Switzerland including, notably, Maria Weiterer, Leo Bauer and Fritz Sperling. Their first son was born in 1946. ) Trautszsch lost his position on the regional Party Control Commission (PCC) in 1954, and was subjected to a rapid loss of position and status during the next couple of years. but he seems to have been quickly forgotten, both officially and otherwise. Some years later, however, in 1999, the influential historian-publisher Annette Leo published a biographical sketch on Walter Trautszch, and since then others have also revisited his remarkable, if tragic, life story.