While still a student of German, history and geography at the University of Vienna, Franz Hadamowsky showed an interest in the theatre. He obtained his doctorate in 1922 with a thesis on the work of the old Viennese theatre director Franz Pokorny. After working as a librarian and from 1923 as director of the Vienna Volksbildungsverein (adult education institute) library, he was made redundant in 1933, but in March of the following year Karl Lugmayer, who was responsible for popular education in Vienna, appointed him as director of this establishment, a position he held until he was dismissed in March 1938. When he fulfilled the conditions for his reinstatement at the end of 1938 by joining the NSDAP, he went back to work as "Gausachbearbeiter (expert) in the office of the Deutsches Volksbildungswerk (DAF) in the Gau of Vienna". From January 1940 until the end of the war, however, he served in the military, first in Poland, then on the Russian front. He was taken prisoner in May 1945 but released in the autumn of that year. He found work as an unpaid intern at the Institute of Theatre Studies at the University of Vienna until obtaining full-time employment in the National Library. Having already worked as a research assistant in the theatre collection from 1929 to 1934, Hadamowsky, who during his career wrote numerous articles about the history of Viennese theatre, became director of this collection and of the Theatermuseum in 1954 until his retirement in 1966.