Walter Czollek (8 April 1907 - 23 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.