Einstein’s violin authenticated by Trinity Fellow sells for £860,000

An 1894 violin owned by Albert Einstein which was authenticated by Trinity Fellow Dr Paul Wingfield has sold for £860,000 at auction today – more than half a million pounds above the top estimate.

The sale of lot 258 is a fitting end to a remarkable story of life imitating art for Dr Wingfield, who is composer of Einstein’s Violin, a new musical drama about the scientist’s life as a violinist, which premiered last April.

Albert Einstein famously remarked that, had he not been a physicist, he would have been a musician. ‘I know that most joy in my life has come to me from my violin,’ he said. His wife Elsa said she fell in love with him ‘because he played Mozart so beautifully on the violin.’

After a performance of Einstein’s Violin at the Highgate Festival in June 2024, the theatre manager handed Dr Wingfield a message that began, ‘I am not mad…!’

Reading this message proved to be one of the most exciting, if surreal, experiences in my life. It was from an auctioneer who had been commissioned to sell a violin that had purportedly belonged to Einstein, and who was asking for my help in checking the instrument’s provenance.

That auctioneer was Chris Albury, of Dominic Winter Auctioneers, who at the sale today thanked Dr Wingfield for his expertise in authenticating the violin. Like all of Einstein’s violins, it was inscribed with the name ‘Lina.’

Dr Wingfield, who attended the auction in person, said:

I was confident that the guide price of £300,000 was an under-estimate, but none of us thought it would sell for such a high price. One of the most exhilarating days of my life, although it ranks just below the birth of my twin daughters!

Dr Wingfield, whose research focuses primarily on Czech music and music theory and analysis, was inspired to create the musical drama at the funeral of his brother-in-law, Joseph Schwartz. A lifelong Einstein enthusiast and co-author of the 1979 Einstein for Beginners, Joseph’s copy of this book was on a table next to a family photograph album containing a 1912 picture of a small boy playing the violin.

Dr Wingfield said:

This juxtaposition sparked in my mind the idea of composing a musical drama, in which Einstein tells the story of his life, not as a physicist, but as a violinist, to the accompaniment of music for violin and piano.

Researching, scripting and composing this show took me six months, by which time I had collected details of everything Einstein is known to have said or written about music, as well as of the violins he owned, and of the concerts in which he played.

Dr Wingfield continued: ‘I am of course not an expert on nineteenth-century violins but, by a quirk of circumstance, my extensive research into Einstein’s musical life made me the obvious person to investigate the narrative of the owner of the 1894 violin.’

‘Over the summer I deployed all the historical skills that I have amassed over the years, in examining correspondence and a wide range of other documents, critically appraising witness testimonies, mapping Einstein’s movements over a 40-year period and even analysing his school-age handwriting.’

‘Along the way, I have acquired knowledge about topics that were previously a closed book to me, such as nineteenth-century varnish, the precise measurements of Einstein’s hands and even inter-War Belgian customs regulations.’

Einstein bought the violin in Munich in 1894, before he left for Switzerland. He played it throughout the period in which he developed his theory of relativity and received his Nobel prize, buying a new violin in Berlin in 1920.

In 1932, just before he fled Nazi Germany for the US, he gave the Munich violin, along with a bicycle and two books, to his friend and fellow Nobel Laureate in Physics, Max von Laue. Twenty years later, von Laue gifted the violin and other items to a friend, Margarete Hommrich, whose great-great-granddaughter put the violin up for sale.

Dr Wingfield said:

I am now as sure as anyone could be that this violin was indeed once owned by Einstein. It would seem that, just occasionally, life does imitate art.

After the success of Einstein’s Violin, he is composing a new musical drama, Mademoiselle Adagio, about the nineteenth-century violinist, Teresa Milanollo.

This article is adapted from Music @ Cambridge: Research blog

Listen to Leora Cohen playing Einstein’s violin