Angela Piskernik

Angela Piskernik (27 August 1886 – 23 December 1967) was an Austro-Yugoslav botanist and conservationist.

Angela Piskernik

Biography

Piskernik was born in Bad Eisenkappel in Southern Carinthia, which remained with Austria after the First World War, and held a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Vienna.^[1] Among her teachers was Hans Molisch. She worked for the provincial museum in Ljubljana and taught in various secondary schools.

As a nationally conscious Slovene woman, she was active in the Carinthian plebiscite and in a club of migrants.^[2] In 1943 she was imprisoned and detained in the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbrück.^[3] She is mentioned in the autobiographic novel "Angel of Oblivion" by the Austrian author Maja Haderlap.^[4]

After 1945 she became director of the Museum of Natural History in Ljubljana and worked in the conservation service.^[5] In particular, she made efforts to renew and protect the Juliana Alpine Botanical Garden and Triglav National Park.^[6][7] She was inspired by the Italian conservationist Renzo Videsott.

In the 1960s she headed the Yugoslav delegation of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA) and proposed a transnational nature park with Austria in the Savinja Alps and Karawanks. The bilateral park was, however, never realized.^[8] Today, this area is part of the European Green Belt. She died in 1967 in Ljubljana.

In 2019, Piskernik was honoured with a commemorative stamp issued in Slovenia.^[9]

Writings

• Jugoslovansko-Avstrijski visokogorski park (predlog za zavarovanje), containing a summary in English: Yugoslav-Austrian high mountain park (proposition for protection) (1965), Varstvo narave 4, pp. 7-15