Mar 19, 2015 - Sale 2376

Sale 2376 - Lot 47

Price Realized: $ 6,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
1945: "SECURITY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TASK FOR OUR TIME" EINSTEIN, ALBERT. Typed Letter Signed, "A. Einstein," to André Bly ("Dear Commandant Bly"), in English, expressing happiness that he has survived, hoping that humanity has learned the importance of security, recalling their time together aboard a ship and contrasting it to his life since, noting that much of what was destroyed cannot be rebuilt, and preferring the awareness of the horrors of the past to the uncertainty felt at the time. 1 page, 4to, personal stationery; marginal discoloration from prior matting, folds. Princeton, 31 January 1945

Additional Details

"I was really happy . . . to know that you have survived all dangers and are ready to return to your dear country. We can both hope that from this second lesson humanity has learned that an effective organization for security is the most important task for our time.
"I remember with pleasure the hours we spent together when you invited me for a trip aboard the 'Zinnia'. I have not seen any ship from inside since over ten years; I am always sitting and working in my little house where the outside world enters only in the form of newspapers and radio.
"I was very much impressed by the photographs you have sen[t] me. A good deal of this destruction can never be repaired for the art of past centuries can never be revived. I think that the consciousness of the horrible happenings of those years is still better than the feeling of threat and uncertainty which dominated all minds at the time when we last met!"