After he finished his school education, he studied printing in Wiener Neustadt, while also trying to sign apprentices up to the Austrian social-democratic youth movement.[1] His political activities put him in contact with the Social Democratic Party of Austria which he joined in 1903[2] and became the Wiener Neustadt constituency secretary.[1]
Career
After his education, Helmer worked as a newspaper printer.[3] He became the editor of Gleichheit and Wiener Volkstribüne in 1910.[4]
He became the youngest ever social-democrat politician to be elected to the Lower Austria state parliament on 15 May 1919.[1] After Vienna separated from Lower Austria he worked as the head of the social-democratic provincial government constituencies and the parliamentary faction.[1] In 1927 he was promoted to the provincial capital representative.[1]
Helmer was a member of and the deputy party chair of the Socialist Party.[5] He was arrested by Nazis in 1934, and from 1935 to 1945 worked in the insurance industry.[4]
In 1945, he became the Ministry of the Interior of Austria, he played a major role in the denazification process, including reforming the police force.[6][1]
In 1959, he became president of Austria's Länderbank.[4] He won the Nansen Refugee Award the same year.[7]
^Kreisky, B., Lewis, J., Rathkolb, O. (2000). The Struggle for a Democratic Austria: Bruno Kreisky on Peace and Social Justice. United Kingdom: Berghahn Books.
^Knight, R. (2017). Slavs in Post-Nazi Austria: Carinthian Slovenes and the Politics of Assimilation, 1945-1960. India: Bloomsbury Publishing. p45