He served in the 20 July 1866 sea battle at Lissa, aboard the ironclad Drache.

He co-led, with Julius von Payer, the 1872-1874 Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition which discovered the archipelago Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Ocean.

The expedition then moved on sledges to go further north, then to open water, where they used boats to reach the Black Cape of Novaya Zemlya and would eventually contact a Russian schooner, "Nikolaj", under Captain Feodor Voronin, and get to Vardø, Norway, where they took the mail boat south and eventually returned to Vienna.

[3] On 18 September 1875, he addressed the 48th Meeting of German Scientists and Physicians in Graz, Austria.

[4] According to Weyprecht, it was important to organize a network of Arctic stations taking regular measurements of weather and ice conditions with identical devices and at preestablished intervals.