Dr. Walther Peinsipp

Walther Peinsipp was born the son of a shoemaker and attended elementary school in Au (Canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland). After graduating from high school in 1926, he began studying at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Vienna (Dr. iur. 1932) and joined the Babenberg student fraternity in 1928. After completing his studies and a year in court, he worked as an editor at the "Lienzer Nachrichten" newspaper from 1931 to 1934.

On July 15, 1934, shortly before the July Putsch, Walther Peinsipp became secretary to Walter Adam, the Federal Commissioner for the Homeland Service, in the Federal Chancellery. In this function, he is the advisor for trade, agricultural and social policy. After the Anschluss, he was dismissed as "emphatically clerical" or due to "political unreliability" and his employment was officially terminated on June 30, 1938. He then found employment at Alpenländische Treuhandgesellschaft mbH.

In 1942, he was drafted into the German Wehrmacht (artillery) and worked as a translator for the "Abwehr" in the Balkans (Yugoslavia, Albania). After returning to Vienna in May 1945, he worked for a tax consultancy firm from November 1945 to January 1946 and then found a job in the export department of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. In 1946, he was sent to Switzerland as executive secretary of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the Federal Chamber of Commerce. In 1947, he joined the Federal Chancellery/Foreign Affairs, but remained in Switzerland and was assigned to the Austrian legation in Bern.

From January 1948, Walther Peinsipp was Austrian Consul General in Zurich (co-legalized in the Principality of Liechtenstein), before working briefly in Vienna from April to August 1952. In 1952, he took up his post as chargé d'affaires in Ottawa (Canada). However, Peinsipp left Ottawa at the beginning of 1956 to take up his post as Austrian envoy in Budapest on March 20, 1956.