violins played by Einstein

Einstein's violin sells for £860k at auction, the BBC reported this week (on 8.10.2025). The trouble is, he owned several violins through his life time, apparently called all of them Line (US sources tend to say "Lina"), so I'm getting confused and need to sort this out.

• According to the BBC the one sold in October 2025 was made by Anton Zunterer in 1894 and believed to be his first (although he supposedly learned from age 5, which would have been much earlier - so this may have been his first full size one, or the first he bought for himself as another source said). Zunterer (1858-1917) was a Mittenwald-trained luthier who established his workshop in Munich in 1888.
• One that the top notch luthier workshop of W.E. Hill in London saw when Einstein visited in October 1933 which may or may not be the same as the above. As Kate Kennedy reports in the book Cello (based on her research using the Hill workshop diaries), the luthiers were disparaging about Einstein's instrument, and somewhat unfairly made him compare it with a Stradivarius they happened to have around.
• A later one which was made by Oscar Steger. a cabinet maker, amateur cellist and hobby luthier in the US after Einstein found refuge there. It sold at auction in March 2018 for just over $ 500,000. According to this page, Einstein eventually gave it to a Princeton University janitor whose son was learning the violin.
• Of another late violin, Paul Halpern tells me that Einstein "bequeathed in his will one of his violins to his grandson Bernhard Caesar (who is no longer alive). Consequently, Albert's great-grandson Paul Einstein became a violinist and has played that violin in concert". I think this is the event and the instrument mentioned in my entry about Einstein's favourite sonata, K304 (which incidentally I am meaning to learn on the violin too). German newspaper clippings of the event held at Ulm in March 2004 on the occasion of Einstein's 125th birthday are here.
• One violin he didn't accept was a Guarneri that was offered to him according to this article from Oxford physicist Brian Foster. He stuck with his more ordinary instrument on the grounds that more sophisticated players would make better use of the power and complexity of the Guarneri. I presume he tried it at least, so I'm listing it here among the instruments he touched.

Here's a longer piece about his violin playing first published in 1980, based on interviews with musicians who played chamber music with him. It includes the names and short bios of many people with whom Einstein played, including both scientific colleagues like Max Planck and professional musicians like Fritz Kreisler. There's also glimpses of the kind of music that that he played, preferring Bach, Mozart and Haydn more recent composers like Brahms or Wagner. Sadly though, not a single word about the instruments as such.

This is a more recent article in National Geographic but very much the same content as the earlier pieces as far as I can tell.

There is also a musical theatre piece about Einstein's violin playing, by Paul Wingfield, who also helped to authenticate his first violin when it came up for auction. Trouble is, after this record-breaking auction result, the title of the piece, "Einstein's violin" has become virtually unsearchable.

Einstein playing the violin. Photo by Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski - Zeitbilder 21/1927, 1927-05-22, p. 1 (online), Public Domain, from Wikipedia

While getting that photo from the English edition of his Wikipedia entry, I found out that the German edition, although marked with a star as an outstanding entry, lacks the info on his music playing - there's only one mention of his learning to play violin as a child, under his education record, but no mention that it was a lifelong passion. I'm afraid that may be telling us something about the lack of appreciation for amateur music making in German culture.

Researching all of the above, I realised that Einstein (1879-1955) was a near contemporary of the amateur chamber music player in my family, Heinrich the cellist (1882-1958). Surely I can find an excuse to include a few paragraphs about Einstein in my 100 years of cellotude?

I was also amused to learn from several of the sources that Einstein's counting during playing was very much relative. Which is very true of my playing as well.