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.

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 (Vereinigung der XI [de]), which was opposed to the teaching methods at the Academy.

In 1902, he was chosen to create trading cards for the Stollwerck chocolate company of Cologne and produced a series of German landscapes.

[2] 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.