Career
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.
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. 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.