Paul's parents were Ludwig Pisk, a secular Jewish lawyer, and Eugenie Pollack, a Protestant. Pisk was the elder of two sons; his younger brother was named Otto. They were raised Protestant. Their mother died when Pisk was four. Ludwig remarried and his second wife also bore a son. Otto and Pisk both served in the Habsburg Army in
World War I. Paul was a supply sergeant for the
cavalry. In 1935 Pisk was made an honorary member of the
Le Droit Humain masonic lodge "Humanitas" No. 962 in
Zagreb during the era of the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Pisk married Martha Maria Frank in 1919. She was from a once-wealthy family from the Habsburg region near
Czernowitz. They had two children. Martha died in 1973, only a few months after she and Pisk had moved back to Austin, Texas, from
St. Louis. After her death, Pisk moved to Los Angeles and remarried. He had known his second wife, singer and voice coach Irene Hanna (born Johanna Schwartz) for many years. Hanna died in 1981. Pisk died in Los Angeles in 1990. == Major publications ==