Albert Einstein’s first violin which he hid from the Nazis sells for £860,000 at auction

13 October 2025, 12:17

The violin was sold for almost three times its asking price, and could be the highest sale price for a violin that did not previously belong to a concert violinist.

Albert Einstein’s first violin that was hidden from the Nazis has been sold at auction for £860,000, almost three times its expected sale of £300,000.

Once a commission of 26.4% is added to the sale, the final price will exceed £1 million, meaning it could be the highest price ever paid at auction for a violin that was not previously owned by a concert violinist, or made by Stradivarius.

The previous record was held by the violin played by RMS Titanic bandleader Wallace Hartley as the ship sank. It sold for £900,000 in 2013.

Read more: The miracle 110-year-old violin that survived the sinking of the Titanic

Einstein acquired the 1894 Anton Zunterer violin, known as ‘Lina’, shortly before leaving Munich to move to Switzerland for his studies in the mid-1890s, and he played it throughout his late teens and early adult life.

However, when he planned to flee Germany for America to escape Nazi persecution in late 1932, he did not want the instrument to come to any harm, so gave the violin, his bicycle and a philosophy book to his friend and physicist colleague Max von Laue.

20 years later, von Laue gifted the items to Margarete Hommrich, an acquaintance and Einstein fan from Braunschweig. The items remained in her family for 70 years, before going under the hammer at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in Cirencester.

Read more: Violin once owned by Albert Einstein fetches $516,500 at auction

Before the sale went ahead, the auctioneers contacted Dr Paul Wingfield, director of studies in music at Trinity College, Cambridge, to verify the instrument. Wingfield had recently written and staged Einstein’s Violin, a musical dramatisation of Einstein’s ‘alternative career’ as a violinist.

In preparation, Dr Wingfield had spent six months collating everything the acclaimed physicist had ever said about music – accidentally making him the perfect person to confirm the violin’s authenticity.

Chris Albury, a senior auctioneer, told The Telegraph: “Einstein’s violin is a particularly precious and exciting item to handle.

“When it arrived for analysis and valuation the violin’s sound post and bridge were both detached and it had not been played for a very long time.

“We know that Einstein named all his violins ‘Lina’ so to see this etched onto the back panel was hair-raising.”

He added: “It is spine-tingling to think that he would have been playing pieces by his beloved Mozart and Bach while his young mind was thinking through his revolutionary ideas, many of which still underpin so much scientific and technological research today.

Read more: Secret note found hidden in Jewish prisoner’s violin at Dachau concentration camp

Einstein played the piano from the age of five and loved music throughout his life. He once said, “I know that most joy in my life has come to me from my violin.” His wife, Elsa, even said she fell in love with him “because he played Mozart so beautifully on the violin”.

“Life without playing music is inconceivable for me,” Einstein once stated. “I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music ... I get most joy in life out of music.”