Rudolf Schlechter


Friedrich Richard Rudolf Schlechter was a German taxonomist, botanist, and author of several works on orchids.
He went on botanical expeditions in Africa, Indonesia, New Guinea, South and Central America and Australia.
His vast herbarium was destroyed during the bombing of Berlin in 1945.

Early life

Rudolf Schlechter was born on 16 October 1872 in Berlin, the third of six children. His father Hugo Schlechter was a lithographer. After finishing school at the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium he started a horticulture education, first at the gardening market of Mrs. Bluth and then at the University of Berlin garden. There he worked as an assistant till the autumn of 1891.

Career

Rudolf Schlechter began his career of botanical fieldwork by leaving Europe in 1891 to journey to Africa and subsequently across Indonesia and Australia. Throughout his career he has focused on expanding his research collection of orchids. He was a leader of expeditions in German Africa, investigating the Caoutchouc industry, but continually collecting plant specimens. He also lived extensively in German New Guinea in the first decade of the new century. Before World War I he settled in Berlin, marrying his wife Alexandra Schlechter and becoming curator of Berlin's botanical garden in Dahlem. He is estimated to have proposed one thousand new species in the family Orchidaceae alone.

Works