About us
Chladni`s Heirs are looking back on a more than 20 years lasting experience in the field of meteoritics. In combining professionalism with individual advice we supply private and institutional collections likewise. From the beginning and the senior collector to universities, exhibitions and museums and beyond to all, succumbed by the fascination of the aesthetics and extraneousness of this matter from outer space. It was shortly before the new millennium, when the deserts of Sahara started to divulge their - nevertheless rare - but undreamed-of treasures to science and collectors. From the beginning on, Stefan Ralew, the heart of Chladni`s Heirs, was on the spot on the hunt for the new exiting finds. On his numerous, often venturesome and laborious travels through Maghreb, he was able to identify not only reams of new meteorites, but also multitudinous representatives of the rare and rarest meteorite types. Many of his rediscoveries rank among the important finds of recent times, several weren`t available to the collector before and some of them turned out to be simply unique. With these contributions to science and his successful work in the field of meteoritics, he gained perfect appreciation among experts, researchers, institutional collections and the private meteorite enthusiast. That reputation is our commitment and the challenge to discover the new, the unknown and unique, is the thrill, which keeps us continuing the difficult task, even in these times of a highly declining find-quota in the hot deserts. Thence also in future Chladni`s Heirs will be on the forefront, where the messengers from far Worlds still resist to disclose their secrets, and will part our recoveries with all, who share our passion for these rocks from space! At Chladni`s Heirs you are buying from the source; a matter of course in times, where unfortunately more and more material is offered, which is neither genuine nor authentic. A professionally high quality in specimen preparation we take for granted and a particular attention we pay to a full and frank customer service. With our task to recover permanently new and rare meteorites and to open them for research and for the collector and with our concern to popularize meteorites to a public awareness, we feel constrained to the tradition of the father of modern meteoritics: Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni.
Ernst Florens Chladni
Chladni
Chladni was born on 30th of November 1756 in Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt. He grew up in relatively narrow circumstance, his father was dean of the local faculty of laws, rigorously educating him for a safe life-time job as jurist. Thus, despite his affinity to natural sciences he absolved a study of laws and philosophy. Shortly after his exams his father died and Chladni came to a plucky decision and sat at nought the comfort perspective to work as a jurist and planned to dedicate his life to science.
He jobbed in giving lectures in science and mathematics at the university of Wittenberg, but because the payments were meagre, nor any regular employment in sight, he set his mind on inventing and discovering something new and chose for that the field of acoustics as he had also a foible for music, although he hadn't any lessons in music before he was 19. Immediately as it should be with a genius he found his famous figures of sound and invented several new musical instruments. In 1787 he published his first important work: "Discoveries about the Theory of Sound". He improved his new instrument, the Euphone, until it was ready for his purposes, to accentuate his planned lectures for his Road Show.
He bought a cart et voila - then he was on the road for the rest of his life. He travelled through whole Europe, giving cycles of lectures for the bread and butter, maintained his studies in hunting for rare scientific works in the local libraries and corresponded with and met the great savants of these times like Humboldt, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Schreibers, Laplace... His best guest performances he had once in 1817 in Hamburg, where he acted out in 3 cycles of 12 lectures each and 1808 when he lectured to Napoleon, who rewarded him with 6000 Francs (ironically later during the liberation wars, his little home near Wittenberg planned for retirement burned down by the Napoleonic troups).
Chladni and Napoleon Bonaparte
Chladni, if you ask a physicist today, is known as the pioneer and father of modern acoustics and not so much because of the discovery about the true nature of meteorites and indeed the acoustics were always Chladni's main occupation. In 1802 he published his epoch making book "Die Akustik", Napoleon's cash he used for publishing an enlarged edition in French in 1809. The first contact with the ideas about meteorites he had in 1793, when he met Lichtenberg. It took only one year then, until Chladni published his - for us so famous treaty: "Ueber den Ursprung der von Pallas gefundenen und anderer ihr aehnlicher Eisenmassen". ("About the Origin of the Pallas-iron and similar masses").
His theory about the extraterrestrial origin of the meteorites remained disregarded until the large shower of L'Aigle happened in 1803. Nevertheless meteorites were his obsession, on his travels he assembled a collection of meteorites in buying, swapping and by donations and started to collect all reports about fireballs, falls and stones in the libraries of the cities, he was coming through. In the period from 1816 to 1819 he planned his routes so, that he was able to visit as much meteorites as possible and from 1816 on, meteorites, together with the demonstrative material from his collection, were a topic in his popular lectures. Result of his researches was his comprehensive book (434pages) of 1819: "Ueber Feuermeteore und ueber die mit denselben herabgefallenen Massen". ("About the fiery meteors and the masses which felt with them").
All his life long Chladni was yearning for a regular employment and although he had prominent interceders, never such a position was grated to him, so that he had to carry on with his burdensome life as a scientific nomad. At the age of 70 years, he died on 3rd of April 1827 on the road in a hotel in Wroclaw, Poland.The exact place of his grave is forgotten. By will Chladni disposed of his meteorite collection to the museum in Berlin.
Original label from the Chladni Collection.
Chladni's Heirs are Member of the International Meteorite Collectors Asocciation Fellow of the the St.Georges Confraternity of the Ensisheim Meteorite Guardians, Member of the Meteoritical Society, London.
