A letter penned by one of the greatest minds in history was sold $2.89 million at Christie’s auction house in New York on December 4. Albert Einstein’s 1954 letter to religious philosopher Erik Gutkind is commonly referred to as the “God letter”, and it features Einstein politely but very thoroughly roasting the concept of religion and God in general.
It is considered “one of the statements in the Religion vs Science debate,” said Peter Klarnet, a senior specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie’s auction house. The letter, written in German a year before Einstein’s death, is a reaction to Gutkind’s 1952 book Choose Life: the Biblical Call to Revolt. While Einstein makes it clear he and the philosopher had a lot in common “with regard to the attitude to life and to the human community,” he makes his position on religion clear. “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely legends which are nevertheless pretty childish,” Einstein writes.
Einstein was a German-born Jew who lost his religious faith at a young age. The letter showed his love and shared identity with Jewish people. The letter, which was sold on eBay in 2012, was shown at the Pace Gallery in San Francisco in late November until its December 4 auction in New York City.
It’s not the only missive of Einstein’s that has attracted high interest at Christie’s. In 2002, the auction house sold a typed 1939 letter from Einstein to then-US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The letter warned Roosevelt of the dangers of nuclear bomb technology. It sold for more than $2 million.
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