[3] Josef Afritsch was born at the start of the twentieth century in Graz, at that time the sixth largest city in Austria-Hungary.

Afritsch underwent a conventional schooling, followed by three years at Horticultural Academy in Eisgrub, South Moravia.

[4] In 1923[4] or 1926[1] he joined the city of Vienna's Parks and Gardens service,[4] which he helped to rebuild in the chaotic aftermath of war.

[6] In 1938, a few months after the incorporation of Austria into Nazi Germany, it was Josef Afritsch who applied trades union funds to obtain a ticket on Lufthansa's inaugural scheduled flight from Vienna to Berlin for Bruno Kreisky, the future Federal Chancellor, who both as a SPÖ activist and as a Jew had repeatedly fallen foul of the pro-Nazi government since 1934.

He continued in this position for a long time, acquiring a deep knowledge of various aspects of city administration, and taking care of the naturalisation of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans displaced by the ethnic cleansing that was a feature of the postwar settlement.