His father was a pharmacist who owned a
Kräuterlikör manufacturing plant in
Kujawien that provided much of the family's income, whilst Walter's nephew
Hans became an artist and graphic designer. In 1883, aged seventeen, he moved to Berlin to attend the
Prussian Academy of Art, but after barely one year, he was dismissed by
Anton von Werner for lack of talent. He then took private lessons from
Hermann Eschke and
Hans Gude from 1885 to 1887. Leistikow's first exhibition was at the Berliner Salon in 1886 and, in 1892 he became a member of an artists' association known as Die-XI
(), which was opposed to the teaching methods at the Academy. From 1892 to 1895, he taught at the private academy, Akademie Fehr, run by artist
Conrad Fehr and located on Lützowstrasse 82 in Berlin. He also designed furniture, carpets and wallpapers. In 1902, he was chosen to create
trading cards for the
Stollwerck chocolate company of Cologne and produced a series of German landscapes. For a time, Leistikow tried to become a writer, publishing a
novella called
Seine Cousine (1893) in the
Freie Bühne and a novel,
Auf der Schwelle (1896), but they received little attention. To make matters worse, Kaiser
Wilhelm II despised his pictures and was quoted as saying "er hat mir den ganzen Grunewald versaut" (he has ruined the entire
Grunewald for me). In 1894, he married Anna Mohr (1863–1950), a merchant's daughter from Copenhagen. In 1903, he was one of the co-founders of the
Deutscher Künstlerbund. By 1908, Leistikow was dying from the agonizing effects of advanced-stage
syphilis. He committed suicide by shooting himself while staying at the Sanatorium Hubertus on the
Schlachtensee. Shortly after, a street in Berlin's
Westend district was named after him. In 1920, a street in the
Mahlsdorf district was named after him as well. He was later given an
ehrengrab at the cemetery in
Steglitz. A commemorative stamp was issued in 1972, with one of his paintings of the Schlachtensee. ==Selected paintings==