Richard Kandt

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Richard Kandt
File:Kandt Richard.jpg
physician and explorer
Born (1867-12-17)17 December 1867
Posen, Germany (now Poznań, Poland)
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Nuremberg, Germany

Richard Kandt (17 December 1867, in Posen – 29 April 1918, in Nuremberg; original name Kantorowicz) was a German physician and explorer of Africa.

Life

Richard Kandt started as a psychiatrist in Bayreuth and Munich. Between 1897 and 1907 he explored the North-West of German East Africa and in 1908 was appointed as Resident of Rwanda, where he founded Kigali. Nearly a century after his death, Kandt still is a well-respected person in Rwanda. His former house in Kigali is now a natural history museum.[1]

Kandt's expedition 1897-1901
File:Kandt House Kigali (back view).jpg
House of Kandt in Kigali

In July 1897 he started from Bagamoyo and in July 1898 Richard Kandt discovered one of the Nile-sources in the Nyungwe Forest of Rwanda, the essential Nile-source in his opinion. Kandt tells about this in his book Caput Nili, a deliberately more fancy than erudite work. Between 1899 and 1901 he explored the Lake Kivu.

Since about 1900 he was a close friend with the writer Richard Voss.

On 2 July 1917 Kandt suffered a gas poisoning in World War I on the eastern front. Little later he caught a miliary tuberculosis in Poland. He died 29 April 1918 in a military hospital in Nuremberg.[2]

Works

  • Caput Nili – eine empfindsame Reise zu den Quellen des Nils. Dietrich Reimer Verlag Berlin, 1904, 6.ergänzte Auflage 1921
  • Seele klingt. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1918. Poems, edited posthumously by Franz Stuhlmann.

External links

References

  1. http://www.museum.gov.rw/2_museums/kigali/kandt_house/pages_html/intro/page_intro.htm
  2. Deutsches Kolonialblatt, Nr. 9/10, Berlin, 15. Mai 1918