The final cost to the buyer will be over £1.08 million once the 26.4% commission is added.

The 1894 Zunterer violin went under the hammer at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in South Cerney. Chris Albury, a specialist at the auction house, described the ten-minute sale as a “special moment”, noting that three phone bidders competed fiercely for the instrument. Auctioneers believe the final price could set a record for a violin not made by Stradivarius or previously owned by a concert violinist, BBC reports.

Many are unaware of Einstein’s lifelong passion for music. “He always said that if he hadn’t been a scientist, he’d have liked to have been a musician,” Mr Albury noted. Einstein began playing at the age of four and continued throughout his life.

The violin was part of a collection of items Einstein gave to his physicist colleague, Max von Laue, in late 1932 before fleeing to America to escape the rise of Nazism in Germany. Von Laue later gifted the items to an admirer, Margarete Hommrich, whose great-great-granddaughter was the seller.

Among the other items, a philosophy book gifted by Einstein sold for £2,200, while a bicycle saddle failed to find a buyer. This sale far surpasses the $516,500 (c. £370,000) fetched by another of Einstein’s violins in New York in 2018.