Albert Einstein’s God Letter Sold for 2.9 Million Dollars

A handwritten letter of Albert Einstein where he elaborately wrote his idea of religion is sold for nearly $2.9 million breaking earlier prediction. Written in the year 1954, the “God letter” was earlier expected to fetch $1.5 million at Christie's Rockefeller Center auction in New York.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Albert Einstein wrote this one and a half page note to the German philosopher Eric Gutkind in response to one of his works. The scientist was then 74 years old.

The letter is seen as an important statement by the world famous scientist in the debate between science and religion. According to a statement released by the auction house Christie, “This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein’s death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views”.

The letter has fetched almost double the amount, the auction house has predicted a price of up to 1.5 million. The letter written in German, Einstein takes issue with the belief in God. He writes, “The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses. The Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends”.

The letter continues, “No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can [for me] change anything about this”. He also writes, “like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition”.

He writes, “The Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and in whose mentality I feel profoundly anchored, still for me does not have any different kind of dignity from all other peoples”.

It is not the first time Albert Einstein’s letters have been put up for auction. In the year 2017, a note written by the scientist to an Italian chemistry student who had refused to meet him is sold for $6,100.

The letter was sold along with a number of other letters from Einstein, which includes a 1928 note, which is sold for $103,000, in which he has written his thoughts on the third stage of the theory of relativity.

In the year 2017 again, a note in which Einstein gave advice on a happy living is sold for $1.56 million in Jerusalem. The note is composed of a single sentence, where he writes, “A calm and humble life will bring more happiness than the pursuit of success and the constant restlessness that comes with it”.