Born in Gehrden, Germany, Richter was influenced early by the books of Walther de Haas ("Hanns Günther").
In the 1930s and 1940s, Richter worked as a development engineer and engineering group leader at the radio research group of the Aeronautical Research Institute in Oberpfaffenhofen (Forschungsinstitut für Flugfunk) under Prof. Max Dieckmann (today, the RF and Radar laboratory of DLR, the German Aerospace Center).