Leutelt was born the son of a teacher in
Josefsthal in the Jizera Mountains, northern
Bohemia, then a part of the
Austrian Empire, now the
Czech Republic. He was the great-grandson of the "miracle doctor"
Josef Johann Kittel. Leutelt settled in
Litoměřice to train at a teachers' training college and work as a teacher at the elementary school of his father. As a senior teacher, he took over the local elementary school in the nearby town of
Untermaxdorf (Dolní Maxov) first but later at the training college. At this institution he came into contact with
glass workers and he chose this craft as his life's study. In 1906, he founded a museum in Untermaxdorf, in which he documented the history and economy of the Upper
Kamenice valley. After 1922 he moved as a pensioner near
Jablonec nad Nisou. As a result of the
Beneš decrees, Leutelt, an 85-year-old, was expelled from his home in 1946. He died in 1947 in
Seebergen, Germany at the age of 86. His gravestone in the cemetery of Seebergen reads: "Here rests away his beloved forest homeland, a former champion of German art, Gustav Leutelt, poet of the Jizera Mountains, born in Josefsthal on 21 September 1860; 17 February 1947 died in Seebergen." At the memorial is a plaque: "This memorial stone was donated by
Gablonzer compatriots of the Jizera Mountains in the
Sudetenland from which the people of
Thuringia were expelled in 1945. Renewed by the Leutelt Society in
Schwäbisch Gmünd in 2002". == Quotes ==