Dinter was born in
Bautzen, where he attended the
Realschule. After completing his military service he joined the Botanic Gardens at
Dresden and
Strasbourg to further his botanical and horticultural interests. He was appointed assistant to Prof.
Carl Georg Oscar Drude, the plant geographer, in Dresden. As a result of his keen interest in exotic succulents, he was selected by Sir
Thomas Hanbury to manage his acclimatisation garden, the
Giardini Botanici Hanbury at
La Mortola, near
Ventimiglia on the Italian Riviera. This garden had a large collection of South African bulbs and succulents. After six months at
Kew, he traveled to
Swakopmund, southwest Africa, in June 1897, having sailed on the "Melitta Bohlem". Dinter started his collection in the countryside around Swakopmund, moved on to
Walvis Bay and
Lüderitz where he was intrigued by the succulents growing between shoreline rocks. Since he was financially dependent on sales of his plant specimens, he travelled frequently and widely in the company of
Herero natives. His collections were sent to Haage & Schmidt in
Erfurt, as well as to
Schinz in Zurich and
Engler in Berlin. The German government at the time appointed him as botanist in the territory, a position he held until 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. Dinter experimented with growing various species of exotics and indigenous trees - first at
Brakwater near
Windhoek and later at
Okahandja - Cypresses, Eucalypts and
Acacia erioloba. In the
Herero Wars he lost most of his personal effects and about half of his plant collection. He visited Germany in 1905 and donated the remainder of his collection to
Berlin-Dahlem. According to his Index, in 1900 he started a new set of numbers for his specimens. While in Bautzen he met Helena Jutta Schilde, who followed him to South West Africa and married him in Swakopmund on 16 May 1906, after which they settled in Okahandja; she turned out to be a tireless companion and colleague on his many expeditions. In 1907 he was visited by
Galpin and Henry Pearson at Okahandja. Dinter visited the
Lake Otjikoto in 1911 and collected several hitherto unknown species of plants, among them grass of the genus
Rottboellia. He accompanied and guided Prof.
Adolf Engler, the noted authority on African flora, on a rather fleeting trip through the region in 1913. Their trip started at Swakopmund and proceeded smoothly in a specially-commissioned railway carriage as far as
Tsumeb and then south to
Warmbad, covering about in the space of a month. Dinter returned to Germany in 1914 and was obliged to remain there until after the end of the war. South Africa had been given a mandate to administer the former
Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika and Dinter applied to the authorities to be reinstated as the regional botanist. To this end he returned to Okahandja in 1922 and helped with the planning of Ernst Julius Rusch's succulent garden on the farm Lichtenstein.
Dr. IB Pole Evans had discussions with the South West African government and as a result Dinter was given an ox-wagon, transport and labour expenses, and free rail travel. In return he would prepare four sets of specimens at a fixed price per sheet, one for himself and the other three to various herbaria. In 1924 he was awarded an honorary professorship by the German government together with a modest pension. This enabled him to return to Germany in 1925. He made two further visits to South West Africa, from 1928 to 1929 when he collected in the coastal desert area, and again from 1933 to 1935 when he travelled north from
Grootfontein to the
Okavango River and in the South from
Aus to Sendelingsdrift on the
Orange River. He died in
Neukirch/Lausitz, aged 77. == Legacy ==