A violin that once belonged to one of history’s best-known scientists has sold at auction for £860,000.
The 1894 Zunterer violin is believed to have been Einstein’s first and was initially expected to fetch around £300,000 when it went under the hammer at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.
A philosophy book that Einstein gifted to a friend also sold for £2,200.
All prices will have an extra 26.4% commission added on top, meaning the final price for the violin will be above £1m.
Auctioneers believe that once the commission is added, the sale could be the highest ever for a violin that was not previously owned by a concert violinist or made by Stradivarius, with the previous record being held by an instrument that was likely played on the Titanic.
Chris Albury, senior auctioneer and historical memorabilia specialist at Dominic Winter Auctioneers, described the sale, which was completed in about 10 minutes, as a “special moment”.
“We had three phone bidders heavily involved up until the very end,” he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.
Mr Albury said many people were unaware that Einstein had played the violin.
“He always said that if he hadn’t been a scientist, he’d have liked to have been a musician.
“He started learning the violin at about the age of four and played it every day through his life.”
A bike saddle also owned by Einstein did not sell at the auction and may be re-listed.
All the items up for auction were given to his good friend and physicist colleague Max von Laue in late 1932.
Shortly afterwards, Einstein fled to America to escape the rise of antisemitism and Nazism in Germany.
Max von Laue gifted them to an acquaintance and Einstein fan, Margarete Hommrich, 20 years later, and it was her great-great-granddaughter who had now put them up for sale.
Another violin, once owned by Einstein, which was gifted to him upon his arrival in the United States in 1933, was sold at auction for $516,500 (£370,000) in New York in 2018.
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