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 a gardening market, later at the University of Berlin garden. There he worked as an assistant till the autumn of 1891. His brother was Max Schlechter (1874–1960), was a German trader and collector of natural history specimens.[2]
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.[3]
Works
Die Orchideen von Deutsch-Neu-Guinea, 1914
Die Orchideen, ihre Beschreibung, Kultur und Züchtung, 1915
Orchideologiae sino-japonicae prodromus, 1919
Orchidaceae Powellianae Panamenses, 1922
Die Orchideenflora der südamerikanischen Kordillerenstaaten (written with Rudolf Mansfeld), 1919–1929
Monographie und Iconographie der Orchideen Europas und des Mittelmeergebietes (written with G. Keller), 1925–1943
Blütenanalysen neuer Orchideen (published by R. Mansfeld), 1930–1934