Hammer comes down on Einstein’s violin at a whopping £860,000

An 1894 violin owned by Albert Einstein, thought to be the first one he bought - that came to Newbury violin & bow maker Philip Brown for a bit of pre-auction TLC was estimated to fetch up to £300,000.

The hammer came down on Wednesday for a whopping £860,000 - £1,084,640 with buyer’s premium.

Einstein gave the Zunterer instrument to a fellow physicist and friend, the Nobel prizewinner Max von Lauer, in 1932, before fleeing Germany for the US, fearful of ever-increasing antisemitism and the rising tide of Nazism.

He passed several items on to him, including a bicycle and a signed philosophy book to help with Max’s Latin. Von Laue kept the bicycle for 20 years by which time it had seized up. The great great grandmother of the current owner however, kept the saddle, together with the book and violin. And after five generations decided to take to auction.

There were three phone lines involved until the very end, the winning bidder being a private anonymous collector in Europe.

Chris Albury of Dominic Winter Auctioneers in Gloucester said “It is a house record. I still don’t think it has sunk in properly at all, and I keep misremembering the price as £360,000… which is closer to what I would have guessed had we had an office sweepstake!”

“The seller is equally surprised and happy and hopes that her great-great-grandmother would have approved of the sale and violin’s new owners and home. I think she would.”

There were no bids for the saddle but the book sold for £2,200 (hammer £2,684, with premium).