Richard Kandt started as a
psychiatrist in
Bayreuth and
Munich. Between 1897 and 1904 he explored the North-West of
German East Africa and in 1907 was appointed as
Resident of Rwanda, where he established
Kigali as an administrative capital of
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. In 1898, he discovered the source of the
Kagera River. 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. Shortly after, he caught a
miliary tuberculosis in Poland. He died 29 April 1918 in a military hospital in Nuremberg. ==Works==