Ballmann originally came from a farm in Mainfranken and learned the carpentry trade. He came from a district in which there was a significant following for the SPD and later also for the KPD. Like many communist party members, he had also renounced bourgeois institutions: he had left the church, described himself as a believer in God and had been living with a party comrade, a glove seamstress, since 1924. Between 1922/23 and his arrest in 1933, Ballmann was a city councillor in Wiesbaden, ultimately as parliamentary group leader of the KPD. From 1930-32, he was elected to the Nassau municipal parliament for the Frankfurt district; in 1933, he was elected for the Wiesbaden district. However, he was unable to take up this seat as he had been excluded from attending sessions due to his membership of the KPD.

Together with other KPD functionaries, he was taken into "protective custody" in March 1933 and interned in the Esterwegen and Sonnenburg concentration camps until April 1939. In the course of "Aktion Gewitter", which was initiated after July 20, 1944, Ballmann was arrested again and sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he died shortly before the end of the war.

Burkardt, Barbara/Pult, Manfred (ed.): Nassau parliamentarians. A biographical handbook. Part 2: Der Kommunallandtag des Regierungsbezirks Wiesbaden 1868-1933. Vorgeschichte und Geschichte des Parlamentarismus in Hessen, vol. 17, Wiesbaden 2003 (Historische Kommission für Nassau 71) [p. 17f.].