Albert Einstein’s ‘God letter’ fetches almost US$3 million at auction
- Missive that calls the Bible ‘a collection of primitive legends’ was expected to fetch only half that much
A handwritten missive by Albert Einstein known as the “God letter” fetched almost US$3 million at auction.
Christie’s auction house in New York said on Tuesday that the letter, including the buyer’s premium, fetched US $2.89 million under the hammer. That was almost twice the expected amount.
The one-and-a-half-page letter, written in 1954 in German and addressed to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, contains reflections on God, the Bible and Judaism.
Einstein says: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish”.
The sentence has been hailed as evidence that the physicist, one of the 20th century’s most esteemed thinkers, was an atheist. But Einstein at times said he was not an atheist, and resented being labelled as one.
In the letter Einstein, a Jew, also articulates his disenchantment with Judaism.