Viktor Pietschmann

Viktor Pietschmann (27 October 1881 – 11 November 1956) was an Austrian ichthyologist at the Vienna Museum of Natural History. He was the curator of the fish collection from 1919 to 1946 and made collecting trips to the Barents Sea, Greenland, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Hawaii, Romania, and Poland. Pietschmann described many new fish, including several species of shark, and had more than 50 publications over his career. He served in the Austrian army in World War I, during which he was stationed in the Ottoman Empire. While there, Pietschmann witnessed the Armenian Genocide and took many photographs of the deportees. He joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) in 1932 and remained a member until the end of World War II.

Viktor Pietschmann was born in Vienna, Austria to parents Karl Pietschmann and Ida in 1881. He graduated in 1899 from the Piaristengymnasium in Vienna and furthered his studies at the University of Vienna in zoology.

In 1905, Pietschmann befriended zoologist Franz Steindachner and became his assistant in the fish collection of the Museum of Natural History in Vienna. That same year he studied deep-sea fish in the Barents Sea, and in 1909 he participated in an expedition to Greenland. He was part of an expedition to Mesopotamia in 1910 where he collected specimens. Pietschmann then headed an expedition to Armenia in 1914. After a brief visit in Austria, he returned to the Ottoman Empire to help the war effort.

During World War I, Pietschmann served in the Ottoman Empire from late 1914 to the end of the war. He served the Turkish Army as an officer, providing ski training for a platoon of Turkish and Kurdish soldiers. He then served with the German and Austrian forces and was tasked to make maps of southwest Asia.

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