Having fled Nazi Germany in 1933 due to a £1000 bounty on his head, Nobel Prize winner and renowned scientist Albert Einstein, retreated to the village of Roughton in Norfolk – and we have discovered some of the photographs that tell this story.
Einstein stayed with Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson who was an MP in the British parliament, and an associate and ally of Winston Churchill.
After becoming one of the signatories of The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror the bounty was instated and Einstein was invited by Locker-Lampson to leave the continent, and he was successful in persuading him to do so. The Brown Book was ‘an international campaign that convinced much of the world that the Nazis had conspired to burn the Reichstag as the pretext to establishing a dictatorship’ (Rabinbach). Locker-Lampson had created a holiday retreat just outside Roughton, so there Einstein stayed for a time, away from the grasp of Nazi Germany.
The retreat consisted of three wooden huts: one that housed Einstein, another where Locker-Lampson’s secretaries-turned-guards, Marjory Howard and Barbara Goodall stayed, and the third contained a grand piano where Sir Jacob Epstein created the famous bust of Einstein from this period.
In the snapshots acquired, Einstein, Locker-Lampson, Howard, Goodall, and gamekeeper Herbet Eastoe are featured (Eastoe probably took some of the photographs himself and these come from his grandson).
The framed photograph was a famous press shot at the time, and depicts Einstein sitting down with Locker-Lampson sat cross-legged next to him. Marjory Howard is stood, peering at something in Einstein’s lap, and Herbert Eastoe is posed with a rifle in the background. There are a couple of holes in the image which go through to the backboard, but it seems the photograph has never been out of the frame.
Other photographs show Einstein and Locker-Lampson having some tea, and a couple of photos of (we think) is Einstein ‘guarding’ Locker-Lampson’s birthday cake with a gun! A series of other snapshots depict Locker-Lampson, with Eastoe (and another unidentified man), hunting and riding a horse.
But the story doesn’t end there…In addition to these exclusive photographs, we also have a selection of early books of Einstein’s lectures on relativity.
First published in 1922, Sidelights on Relativity is a translation (by J.B. Jeffery and W. Perrett) of a lecture given by Einstein on the 5th May 1920 at the University of Leyden. He discusses the ‘Ether and Relativity’ and ‘Geometry and Experience’ – the latter of which being an expanded form of an address to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin on January 27th 1921.
The second book is The Meaning of Relativity and is a first English edition, translated by Edwin Plimpton Adams. It contains four lectures delivered at Princeton University in May 1921, and is accompanied by four diagrams and numerous equations.
The Theory of Relativity is the third and final book in this exclusive bundle, and was translated by Robert W Lawson, with this edition originally published in 1920. The book contains five diagrams and a black and white portrait of Einstein as the frontispiece. The contents of work covers three different sections of writing, including, ‘The Special Theory of Relativity’, ‘The General Theory of Relativity’, and ‘Considerations on the Universe as a Whole’.
All three books are in good condition, with only minor foxing on the fore-edge of each of them, and some minor foxing that has creeped its way onto the end pages of The Theory of Relativity. The spine is faded on Sidelights on Relativity, but other than that they are a great set of books.
This collection is truly a unique assembly of ephemera and high-quality books, including first editions and original snapshots from the 1930s, depicting one of the most famous scientists in the world from a rather unknown time in his history. The whole bundle of the three books, nine snapshots, and the large, framed photograph is being sold for £3,500.
If you are interested in purchasing these items, or would like more information on other ephemera we sell, then please get in contact with us by calling us on 01753 855534, emailing us at sales@mainlybooks.co.uk, or come visit us in store in Eton! Please refer to our Contact Us page for more information on how to reach us.
Referenced in this post:
Anson Rabinbach, ‘Staging Antifascism: “The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror”’, New German Critique, 103 (2008), 97-126 (p. 97).
