Einstein Letter Criticizing Neville Chamberlain Goes On Auction Block

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By Daniel J. Solomon August 22, 2017

It might not be the theory of relativity, but several of Albert Einstein’s letters will go on auction in Los Angeles this week – presenting smart buyers with an opportunity to own history.

Nate D. Sanders Auctions will take bids for the items, the Algemeiner reported, including letters in which the famed physicist reflects on the Munich Agreement – in which France and Britain allowed Nazi Germany to take Czechoslovakia – and his divorce from his first wife.

“Now [Chamberlain] saved Hitler in the nick of time by crowning himself with the wreath of love of peace and inducing France to betray the Czechs,” Einstein wrote to friend Michele Besso about the Munich Agreement, inked by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.

Einstein, who died in 1955, left Germany in 1933, after the Nazis took power. He then took up residence in New Jersey as a professor at Princeton.

His tone in the letters, written in the 1930s, is decidedly pessimistic. “I do not have any hope left for the future of Europe,” he writes in one of his letters to Besso.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

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