He was a writer of both scientific and popular books on birds and served as editor of the avicultural periodical Gefiederte Welt.
His interest in natural history as a child was nurtured by his uncle Friedrich Steinbacher who lived in Berlin along with another ornithologist cousin Georg.
In 1936 he worked along with Oskar Heinroth and Helmut Sick to produce a vinyl record of bird songs.
[1] In 1940 he replaced Gunther Niethammer, who had moved to Vienna, as head of the ornithological department at the Alexander Koenig Museum in Bonn.
[1] Steinbacher published a popular book on bird migration Vogelzug und Vogelzugforschung in 1951 that was translated without his permission into Chinese by Cheng Tso-hsin.