Note to the above solution (from A Paul): The solution doesn't work, cause it doesn't reconstructs back a HashMap< String, Object > - instead it creates a HashMap< String, LinkedHashMap >.
Reason why is because during demarshalling, each Object (JSON marshalled as a LinkedHashMap) is used as-is, it takes 1-on-1 the LinkedHashMap (instead of converting the LinkedHashMap back to its proper Object).
If you had a HashMap< String, MyOwnObject > then proper demarshalling was possible - see following example:
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
TypeFactory typeFactory = mapper.getTypeFactory();
MapType mapType = typeFactory.constructMapType(HashMap.class, String.class, MyOwnObject.class);
HashMap<String, MyOwnObject> map = mapper.readValue(new StringReader(hashTable.toString()), mapType);