Sebastian Leitner

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Sebastian Leitner (1919 in Salzburg – 1989) was a German commentator and science popularizer.

As a student in Vienna, he was briefly kept in custody by the Nazis in 1938 because of his opposition to the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany.{{cite web |title=Sebastian Leitner |url=https://www.fischerverlage.de/autor/sebastian-leitner-1008262 |website=S.Fischer Verlag |access-date=25 February 2024 |language=de }} Later he moved to Frankfurt to study law, but he was recruited by the Wehrmacht in 1942. After spending several years in a Soviet POW camp, he returned to Germany in 1949 and started a career as a commentator. His wife was the Austrian journalist and author Thea Leitner.

At first, he focused on legal and sociological topics, but later he took medical and psychology-related subjects as his theme. His book So lernt man lernen (How to learn to learn), a practical manual on the psychology of learning, became a bestseller. In this often-cited book he described his Leitner System which uses flashcards for accelerated and increased learning by spaced repetition.