Albert Einstein's Violin Sells for Nearly £1 Million at Sale
The musical instrument once in the possession of the renowned physicist has gone for £860k at auction.
The Zunterer violin from 1894 is considered to have been Einstein's first instrument and was at first expected to fetch approximately £300,000 when it went on the block in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.
An additional philosophy book that the physicist presented to a friend fetched at a price of two thousand two hundred pounds.
Each of the final bids will be subject to an extra commission of 26.4% added to them, which means the total cost for the instrument will exceed £1m.
Auctioneers estimate that after the additional charges are added, the transaction may become the record for a violin not once played by a concert violinist or made by Stradivarius – as the earlier record achieved by an instrument reportedly likely played on the Titanic.
Another cycling saddle also belonging by Einstein failed to sell at the auction and might get put up again.
All pieces offered for sale were given to his colleague and physicist Max von Laue in late 1932.
Not long after, Einstein escaped to America to flee the growth of prejudice and National Socialism in his homeland.
Max von Laue gifted them to a contact and admirer of Einstein, Margarete Hommrich 20 years later, and the seller was her great-great granddaughter who had offered them for auction.
Another violin once owned by the physicist, that was presented to Einstein upon his arrival in the US in 1933, fetched during a bidding event for $516.5k (£370,000) in New York during 2018.
