Pissler studied law at the Maximilian University of Würzburg and law and sinology at the University of Hamburg. He conducted language studies and research at the Sino-German Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Nanjing from 1996 to 2002. In 2002 he was appointed as Senior Research Fellow for China at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Law in Hamburg. He is a member of the advisory board of the Zeitschrift für Chinesisches Recht (which contains annual bibliographies of Western-language works on Chinese law compiled by him since 2003) and Schriften zum Chinesischen Recht since 2008. Besides three major works on Chinese law, he contributed several shorter pieces to collections, commentaries, handbooks, encyclopaediae and Chinese legal journals. He has translated several important decisions of the Chinese supreme people's court.