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A string instrument once belonging to the renowned physicist has fetched nearly a million pounds during a sale.

That 1894 Zunterer violin is believed to have been his earliest violin and had been at first expected to sell for around three hundred thousand pounds during its under the hammer in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.

An additional philosophical text that Einstein presented to a friend also sold for two thousand two hundred pounds.

All prices will be subject to an extra 26.4% commission included, which means the total cost for Einstein's violin will be £1 million.

Auctioneers believe that after the fees are applied, the transaction could be the top price for a violin not formerly belonging by a performing artist or crafted by Stradivari – while the prior highest sale achieved by a musical item reportedly perhaps used aboard the Titanic.

Another bicycle seat also owned by Einstein remained unsold during the sale and could be put up again.

All objects up for auction were passed to his close friend and physicist von Laue in the latter part of 1932.

Not long after, Einstein fled to the US to flee the rise of antisemitism and National Socialism in his homeland.

Von Laue passed them on to an acquaintance and Einstein fan, Margarete Hommrich two decades later, and the seller was her descendant who had decided to sell them.

A second violin previously belonging by Einstein, which was gifted to him upon his arrival in the US in the year 1933, was sold in a sale for $516.5k (three hundred seventy thousand pounds) in New York back in 2018.