Kurt Dinter

Moritz Kurt Dinter (10 June 1868 in Bautzen – 16 December 1945 in Neukirch/Lausitz), was a German botanist and explorer in South West Africa.

He attended the Realschule in Bautzen, completed his military service and 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. He also spent about six months at Kew, returned to La Mortola and decided on a trip to South West Africa. He landed at Swakopmund in June 1897, having sailed on the "Melitta Bohlem".

Dinter started his collection in the countryside around Swakopmund, moved on to Walvis Bay and Luderitz where he was intrigued by the succulents growing between shoreline rocks. Since he was a collector, financially dependent on sales of his plant specimens, he travelled frequently and widely in the company of his two Herero helpers. These collections he 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.

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