He was the son of the social democratic journalist and historian Ludwig Brügel, who would perish in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1942, a victim of the Holocaust.

He co-founded the Association of Socialist Writers in 1933, and he participated in the February Uprising of 1934 after joining the Communist Party of Austria.

He soon got a job as a legation councilor with the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry, helping contribute to several magazines.

Brügel traveled to the Soviet Union in 1936, and moved to France in 1938 after the Munich Agreement was signed in September that year.

[4] In addition to his work in journalism, Brügel also wrote narrative works and poems; his best known being the lyrics for the Austrian socialist song "Die Arbeiter von Wien," a song honoring the 1927 July Revolt where 89 people were killed.