Otto Ernst Wimmer

Otto Ernst Wimmer, later known simply as Ernst Wimmer, is the second child of the former imperial and royal officer and later authorized signatory of the Creditanstalt-Bankverein. He was born in Horn to Otto Wimmer, a former imperial and royal officer and later authorized signatory of Creditanstalt-Bankverein, and his wife Hermine, née Philipp. For professional reasons, the middle-class Catholic family moved to Vienna at the end of 1924. Ernst Wimmer attended elementary school there and then transferred to the Ignaz-Seipel-Gymnasium [note: today's GRG Vienna XII Rosasgasse].

Ernst Wimmer's family was Catholic and conservative. His father was the regimental commander of the Vienna Heimatschutz, his sister Edith Wimmer was a member of this organization. The family was critical of National Socialism. After the occupation of Austria by the Third Reich in March 1938, Friedrich Theiß founded the Austrian Front, which later changed its name to Austrian Movement. This group is recruited from former members of the Austrian Young People or conservative Catholic youths. Edith Wimmer, Ernst Wimmer's sister, is recruited for this group as a former classmate of Friedrich Theiß. Through her, Ernst Wimmer came into contact with the Austrian Front/Austrian Movement (Theiss Group) and joined it in the fall of 1938. In the summer of 1939, he even officially signed a declaration of membership.

The group, which is emphatically Austrian, calls for the separation of occupied Austria from the German Reich. It recruits members and even founds its own women's group. Monthly membership fees were collected, excursions and training courses were organized and pro-Austrian publications were produced. They even considered setting up their own military group under the leadership of Alois Döttling and Franz Vochozka. Ernst Wimmer takes part in the weekly meetings, recruits new members and administers brass stamps with the inscription ÖF XII [Note: Austrian Front XII].

When the anti-aircraft gunner Leopold Buliczek, who was also a member of the Austrian Front, was caught trying to escape to Hungary, he revealed the existence of the Austrian Front group around Friedrich Theiss after interrogation by the Gestapo.

On February 7 and 8, 1940, after house searches, many members of the Austrian Front were arrested by the Gestapo. Probably due to his young age, Ernst Wimmer was not arrested, but merely interrogated by the Gestapo.

On December 17, 1941, the group around Friedrich Theiß, the members of the "Austrian Front", were finally put on trial before the Special Court. As the evidence against Ernst Wimmer was very weak, the trial against him did not take place. However, he was banned from school and studying on March 18, 1942 and was expelled from the 8th grade of grammar school shortly before his school-leaving exams.

He was subsequently drafted into the German Wehrmacht and, after basic military training in Znaim, trained as a radio operator in Zistersdorf. According to his own statement, he was very lucky to be spared deployment on the war front. In order to refuse the marching orders to "save" Berlin, he deserted together with other Austrian Wehrmacht soldiers in the final months of the war.

After Austria was liberated by the Allies, Ernst Wimmer immediately completed his A-levels and worked as an interpreter for the British city commander in Vienna. After dropping out of his studies at the University of World Trade, he works as a journalist for the newspapers Neues Österreich, Der Abend and the Wiener Tagebuch.

After this, he undergoes a political reorientation and Ernst Wimmer becomes a communist. In 1947, he marries Eva Margareta Gans and has three children with her. Both join the KPÖ. He became editor of the Volksstimme and, after the bloody suppression of the East German and Hungarian uprisings and the Prague Spring, one of the advocates of the orthodox Communists loyal to Moscow within the KPÖ. Ernst Wimmer was elected to the Central Committee in 1970.

With the collapse of communism between 1989 and 1991, reformist forces prevailed in the KPÖ and Ernst Wimmer was voted out of his functions at the KPÖ party congress in 1991.