A letter known as The God Letter written by Albert Einstein and addressed to philosopher Eric Gutkind from 1954. Christie's Images Limited 2018/Handout via Reuters
New York: A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein in which he grapples with the concept of religion has sold for nearly $2.9m smashing predictions.
Written in 1954, the so-called “God letter” was expected to fetch $1.5m at Christie’s Rockefeller Center auction here. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, then 74, wrote the one-and-a-half page note to German philosopher Eric Gutkind in response to one of his works. It is seen as a key statement in the debate between science and religion.
“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,” a statement from Christie’s says. It fetched almost double the auction house’s predicted price of up to 1.5m. In the letter, written in his native German, Einstein takes issue with the belief in God.
It is not the first time Einstein’s letters have been put up for auction. In 2017, a note written to an Italian chemistry student who had refused to meet him sold for $6,100. It was sold alongside a number of other letters from Einstein, including a 1928 note that went for $103,000, in which he set out his thoughts for his third stage of the theory of relativity.
