Wladimir Koppen was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and lived there until he was 20 years old. He died in Graz, Nazi Germany. Köppen's grandfather was one of several German doctors invited to Russia by Empress Catherine II to improve sanitation and was later personal physician to the tsar. His father, Peter von Köppen (1793–1864), was a noted geographer, historian and ethnographer of ancient Russian cultures and an important contributor to intellectual exchanges between western European slavists and Russian scientists. He attended secondary school in Simferopol, Crimea, and began his studies of botany in 1864 at the University of St. Petersburg.