Albert Einstein's Violin Fetches £860,000 in a Sale
An musical instrument once in the possession of the renowned physicist has gone for £860,000 in a bidding event.
That Zunterer violin from 1894 is believed to have been the scientist's initial violin and was initially expected to sell for about £300k as it went under the hammer in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.
One philosophy book that the physicist presented to a colleague was also sold for £2,200.
Each of the sale amounts will be subject to a further 26.4 percent fee added to them, so that the final price for the violin will exceed one million pounds.
Bidding specialists think that once the fees are added, this auction could be the highest ever for an instrument not formerly belonging by a performing artist or created by the Stradivarius workshop – with the earlier record being held by a musical item that was possibly performed aboard the Titanic.
A cycling saddle once possessed by the scientist remained unsold at the auction and may be put up again.
The items presented in the sale were passed to his colleague and academic Max von Laue during late 1932.
Not long after, he departed to America to escape the growth of antisemitism and National Socialism in the country.
Von Laue gave them to a friend and admirer of Einstein, Margarete 20 years later, and it was her descendant who recently put them up for sale.
A second violin formerly possessed by Einstein, which was gifted to him as he came in the US during 1933, was sold in a sale for $516,500 (£370k) in NYC in 2018.
