Don’t be too excited by the headline: Hartmann & Weiss, famous German Gunmakers, are not following the steps of Samuel Colt. Though among the best gunmakers of the world, they are “only” making longarms as rifles, shotguns and combinbation guns. Nevertheless, I’ll call this awesome falling-block rifle “six-shooter” because it comes as a six-barrel set.
Without doubt, this rifle, featuring the falling-block system of Martin Hagn is a unique piece, created by Gerhard Hartmann and Otto Weiss for a special customer: German neurologist Prof.Dr. med. Christian Elger is one of the most renowned specialists for epilepsy, he is the man for the “thunderstorms in the brain”. But he also is a keen hunter with a deep passion for hunting in Africa.
As a student, Elger was doing research on the impact of different rifle calibers on wild game, resulting in the desire, to use always the best caliber available for hunting. A fundamental finding was, that velocity plays an important role for a quick kill. Maybe this was the reason for Elgers choice of mainly rapid calibers for his rifle:
But there was another master of his craft involved in this outstanding project: Florian Güllert, Austrian master engraver, has all color hardened parts provided with an awesome, Celtic style hand engraving with deep background.
