The first European to visit or explore Rwanda was a German, Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen, who from 1893 to 1894 led an expedition to claim the hinterlands of the Tanganyika colony. Götzen entered Rwanda at Rusumo Falls, and then travelled through Rwanda, visiting the court of Rwabugiri in 1894, at his palace in Nyanza, and eventually reached Lake Kivu, the western edge of the kingdom. The next year the king dies. With Rwanda in turmoil over the succession, the Germans move in (in 1897, from Tanzania) to claim the region for the Kaiser. With only 2,500 soldiers in East Africa, Germany hardly changed the social structures in much of the region, especially in Rwanda.