Prof. Dr. Otto Krammer

Otto Krammer was born as the son of Josef Otto Krammer, later a member of the Vienna provincial parliament and a civil servant at the Imperial and Royal Court of Audit. After graduating from the teacher training college in Sophienbrückengasse (now Kundmanngasse) in 1913, he transferred to Landstrasser Gymnasium, where he became involved in the Christian German Student Association (CDSB) after the First World War in early 1919. In autumn 1919, this group came up with the idea of founding a Catholic secondary school fraternity, which was then implemented on 26 November of that year with the help of the Viennese student fraternity Franco-Bavaria and given the name Frankonia.

While still at grammar school, Otto Krammer attended the banking and commerce course and began studying at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Vienna after graduating from high school in 1921 (abs. iur. 1925; Dr. iur. 1926). From mid-November 1925 to the end of June 1926 he completed his court clerkship and in 1927 joined the Vienna Postal and Telegraph Directorate. In 1933 he was called up to the Federal Ministry of Trade and Transport, which was responsible for postal services, and in 1934 he was assigned to the Federal Chancellery. There he worked in the Federal Commissariat for Personnel Affairs (Personnel Section) under Section Head Arbogast Josef Fleisch, whose duties included ensuring that the civil service was not infiltrated by National Socialists.

In the course of the Anschluss on March 11, 1938, Otto Krammer managed to take important documents (personnel files) from his office in the Federal Chancellery to safety and dispose of them on the street through a manhole cover into the sewage. He was dismissed immediately after the Anschluss and then retired with half his pension at the end of January 1939. In 1940, this was retroactively reduced to 75 percent. From 1939, he worked in the private sector and was drafted into the German Wehrmacht in 1941.