The two pioneers 2
Dr. Konstantin Raudive (1909 - 1974.)
The Latvian born author grew up with two languages, Latvian and Russian. Already as a young man he left Latvia for studies in Paris, Madrid, Edinburgh and later in Uppsala (Sweden) where he studied philosophy, history of literature, psychology and later also became naturalised. He was known in Europe through his literary and philosophical authorship. In 1965 he became acquainted with Jurgensen and his work. Raudive became interested, and after having attended some of Jurgenson's experiments he decided to start his own investigation - and like Jurgenson became so fascinated with this strange phenomenon that he continued his work until his death. It's worth mentioning that Raudive without slightest hesitation took over Jurgenson's postulated spiritualistic interpretation, a rash decision which like Jurgenson's work later turned out to be fatal for any further recognition, not only of his own work but also of the very Voice Phenomenon.
Also Jurgenson's technical methods and apparatus, if one may use this term at all (a microphone and a radio-receiver), were totally uncritically taken over by Raudive. So the often used term "Raudive-Voices" is a misnomer. Raudive never discovered the Voice Phenomenon and the only, small improvement was introduced by one of his collaborators (professor Alex Schneider, St.Gallen, Switzerland) who hit on the idea to connect the simplest possible "radio-receiver " directly to the input of the tape recorder. Such a device, a germanium diode, is principally the same as the well known crystal detector from the days of the very first radio-transmissions. Here it was used without any tuned circuit and when connected to a short antenna received simply every broadcasting station from the long wave to the short wave bands. On some places it gave good results - and equally good chances for confusion.
(Bibliography 8)
The voices recorded by Raudive have the same characteristic sound as Jurgenson's and later many others experimentators, perhaps with one exception. As already mentioned Raudive had studied in several countries and mastered several languages, a fact that leave its mark on the most of his recorded voices, which best may be characterised as multilinguistic - I have counted seven different languages in his voice samples, some times three or four in one single short sentence. His voices also normally were shorter and more difficult to understand then Jurgenson's. Also all the shortcomings in many of Jurgenson's voice-recordings - the disturbing background noise, the very small sound intensity, can be found on Raudive's voices. Seen from a pure technically viewpoint there is no improvement at all. But what I feel is the most important difference between Jurgenson' and Radive's voices: The latter is far less critical in his judgement and interpretation.
His last years Raudive spend in Germany where he 1972 wrote another book concerning the voice phenomenon. The third was published posthumous 1975 and I will later refer closer to this two books.
Dr. Konstantin Raudive died 1974.
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Dr. Konstantin Raudive's and his wife, the author Zenta Maurina-Raudive's tomb in Bad Krozingen, South Germany. On the tombstone one can read an epitaph in German: "Der Tod - Uebergang in ein neues Werden". (Death - Transition to a new Being.) Who knows? Maybe he is right ....
An acquaintance of mine who had known Raudive personally, after having visited the tomb wrote in a letter: The heavy, rough-hew stone standing here steep and uncompromising is the right monument over this strange, distinctive character. You can not rock this stone just as you could not rock his opinion about anything.
Nevertheless today only few people remember Konstantin Raudive.
It is Zenta Maurina-Raudive and her authorship which still is appreciated and her books are still read.