Albert Einstein's Violin Fetches £860k at Auction

A musical instrument previously in the possession of Albert Einstein has fetched nearly a million pounds at auction.

This 1894 Zunterer violin is considered as being Einstein's first instrument and had been at first expected to sell for approximately £300k when it went under the hammer in the Gloucestershire area.

An additional philosophy book which the physicist gave to a colleague fetched for £2,200.

All prices will have an extra 26.4 percent fee added to them, meaning the final price for the violin will exceed £1 million.

Sale experts estimate that once the fees are included, the sale could be the top price for a string instrument not previously owned by a professional musician or created by the Stradivarius workshop – while the prior highest sale achieved by a violin which was possibly performed aboard the Titanic.

One bike saddle also belonging by the scientist did not sell at the auction and could be put up again.

Each of the objects up for auction were passed to his good friend and academic the physicist Max von Laue in late 1932.

Not long after, the scientist escaped to the US to flee the rise of prejudice and National Socialism in the country.

Von Laue passed them on to a contact and admirer of Einstein, Margarete Hommrich 20 years later, and it was a family member who recently decided to sell them.

One more instrument once owned by the scientist, which was gifted to him when he arrived in the United States in the year 1933, was sold in a sale for $516.5k (£370k) in the United States in 2018.