Reinhold Leinfelder maintains a blog at SciLogs.de called “Der Anthropozäniker – Unswelt statt Umwelt. In mid-2015 the palaeontologist and geobiologist wrote there: “Humankind (and its culture and technology) is part of the Earth system, not its antithesis. Therefore we must integrate into this overall system so that it is not damaged and future generations can also have comparable chances and development opportunities.” Using his concept Unswelt (our world), Leinfelder wants to move away from the dualism of humankind and nature – this guiding principle has accompanied him throughout his career.

The geologist and palaeontologist’s long study of evolution commenced immediately after he left high school in Bavaria, where he was born in 1957. He began studying geology and palaeontology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich). It seems to have been the right choice of subjects for the young man; soon afterwards, in late 1978, he received a DAAD Scholarship. It took him to Portugal for four months, where he made the country's regional geology one of his first research fields.

After completing his studies, he went to the Institute of Geosciences at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, where he spent eight years working as a research assistant. In 1989 he gained his professorial teaching qualification, habilitation, in geology and palaeontology, which enabled him to move up the ladder from assistant to professor. The very same year he received the offer of a professorial chair at the University of Stuttgart.

Nine years later, he was drawn back to Munich. At the university where he had been an undergraduate he took on the position of director at the Institute for Palaeontology and Historical Geology in 1998. Five years later, Reinhold Leinfelder found himself in charge of eight museums, five research collections and Munich's Botanical Garden as director general of the Bavarian State Natural Sciences Collection. In a Letter from Bavaria he attempted to raise people's awareness of the significance of such collections: "A society must also measure itself by how it treats its cultural heritage even in an age of profit and benefit maximisation."

He was seen as the "ideal appointment", a "stroke of luck for the museum and the State of Berlin", when he took office as director general of the Natural History Museum at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), a position that he held until 2010. Until March 2011 he also taught at the HU. In 2012 he became professor at the Freie Universität Berlin (FU). But that is not all. Because knowledge transfer is close to the heart of the successful exhibition manager, in 2014 he founded the Haus der Zukunft gGmbH (House of the Future) in Berlin. This is an initiative that is not only supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, but also prestigious research and science organisations, including the DAAD. The House of the Future aims to bring together people from politics, research and education, business and society at large to negotiate the questions of the future. In June 2015, Leinfelder laid the foundation stone for the House of the Future with Federal Research Minister Johanna Wanka.