SOS Children's Villages Founder Gmeiner — The Perpetrator Who Himself Would Have Needed Help

War-traumatized, alcoholic, incapable of bonding: The organization knew about Hermann Gmeiner's dark side — but remained silent about it and hid it from the public. Also to protect its brand.

23.11.2025

Even we were surprised when SOS Children's Villages made Hermann Gmeiner's inappropriate treatment public. After our investigations, my colleague Matthias Winterer and I received isolated indications that the Children's Village founder had interfered with young children. The allegations were not concrete. The source: hearsay.

SOS Children's Villages has known officially since 2013 about the inappropriate treatment and filed the affected person reports in folders that only a few had access to. Presumably, some in the organization knew much earlier what Gmeiner was doing but said nothing to protect the brand.

The brand was always also Hermann Gmeiner, the benefactor, philanthropist, and friend of children. Born in Alberschwende in Vorarlberg, grew up at 1,300 meters above sea level. Poor farming family, nine children in total, Gmeiner the fifth. The mother died early, the father looked after the farm, the eldest sister after the siblings. In the Second World War, Gmeiner had to go to the Eastern Front and returned wounded. In 1949 he built the first Children's Village in Imst and expanded into over a hundred countries until his death in 1986.

In recent weeks I read five books about the SOS Children's Villages founder. Three of them are from the pen of Hansheinz Reinprecht, once a journalist, then educator, and later Secretary General of SOS Children's Villages. They are classic PR books.

A thin, rather unexciting booklet was written by Gmeiner himself. "Impressions. Thoughts. Confessions," published in 1979.

And then there is the Gmeiner biography by journalist Claudio J. Honsal. "For the Children of This World," it's called. Blue cover, published in 2009, 288 pages thick.

Honsal describes Gmeiner not only as a benefactor but also as a man who was easily offended, who became lonely early and fell into alcoholism; a man who helped but also needed help himself.

Gmeiner lost not only his mother but also his fiancée. She was German and died during the Second World War in a bombing raid on Dresden. Gmeiner, then a young lieutenant, came back traumatized from the war and could not build closeness to other people. He compensated for his loneliness with his commitment to children. He surrounded himself with them.

The Children's Village founder also demanded this from his close employees. Those who disagreed felt his aversion, Hansheinz Reinprecht recounted. "Some suffered for months under a small mistake because he simply turned away from them."

One of them was Gmeiner's closest employee, Alexander Gabriel, once a Children's Village child, then personal assistant to the founder. Gmeiner distanced himself from him. The reason: Gabriel started his own family. Gabriel does not want to speak with Falter. He is shocked by the recent reporting, he says.

"Gmeiner was disappointed and never understood that Gabriel had decided to have a family," Helmut Kutin is quoted in the book. Gmeiner had become "somewhat peculiar." "He was never easy, but that was also part of what made him. One had to distance oneself in time sometimes. A self-protection measure — and I succeeded in that."

Gmeiner apparently did not succeed. Because the bigger his life's work became, the less he could distance himself from it. No private life. No friends outside the organization. No help. "And then alcohol came into play more and more frequently," Kutin said. Gmeiner's great-nephew, Walter Gmeiner, noted: "Alcohol was his drug, with which he got over many problems more easily."

SOS Children's Villages knew Gmeiner's problems. But the organization didn't want to acknowledge them and hid him from the public when he had been drinking. Former employees and former Children's Village children told Falter this. Nothing and no one was allowed to damage the brand — especially not the founder himself.

Hermann Gmeiner lost caregivers early, was traumatized by war, built a village that gave orphans a home, and subjected at least eight children to inappropriate treatment. For SOS Children's Villages, only the sunny side counted for a long time. That too is called self-protection.