Heimito von Doderer was born in Weidlingau, which has been part of the 14th District of Vienna since 1938, in a forester's lodge where his family stayed while his father, the architect and engineer Wilhelm Carl (Gustav), Ritter von Doderer [de] (1854, Klosterbruck (Czech: Loucký klášter [cs]), Znaim – 1932, Vienna) worked on the regulation of the Wien River.

Wilhelm Carl Doderer also worked on the construction of the Tauern Railway, the Kiel Canal and the Wiener Stadtbahn public transport network.

His brother Richard (1876–1955) and his father Carl Wilhelm (Christian) Ritter von Doderer [de] (1825, Heilbronn –1900, Vienna; ennobled in 1877) were also noted architects and industrialists.

The adolescent entered into a homoerotic romantic affair with his home tutor and gained bisexual and sadomasochistic experiences as a frequent brothel visitor.

A long way from home, in a Russian Far East camp for officer POWs in Krasnaya Rechka near Khabarovsk, he decided to become an author and began writing.

Stranded in Samara, Doderer and his comrades again turned to the East, finding refuge in a Red Cross camp near Krasnoyarsk, cared for by Elsa Brändström.

His first published work, the book of poems Gassen und Landschaft ("Streets and countryside"), appeared in 1923, followed by the novel Die Bresche ("The breach") in 1924, both with little success.

Due to ill health, he was allowed in 1943 to return from France, serving in the Vienna area, before a final posting to Oslo at the end of the war.