The British auction house Dominic Winter Auctioneers has announced the sale of a violin previously owned by Albert Einstein. The instrument was made in 1894 by the Munich luthier Anton Zunterer, and the auction house estimates that it could sell for as much as £300,000.

This violin is believed to be the first that Einstein purchased, and he would have played it throughout his late teens and early adulthood, which is the time when he was first developing his theory of relativity. He published landmark papers relating to the theory in 1905 and 1915.

The violin is being sold as part of a collection of items that Einstein passed on to his friend and colleague Max von Laue in 1932, when he left Germany for the USA to escape persecution by the Nazis. The other items in the collection include his bicycle saddle, as well as a copy of a philosophy book on Descartes and Spinoza from 1843.

Von Laue passed the collection on to Margarete Hommrich in 1952, and it has been in her family ever since; Hommrich's great-great-granddaughter has brought the items to auction.

Einstein referred to all his violins by the nickname "Lina" (supposedly an affectionate shortening of the word "violin"), and this instrument has the phrase engraved on the back panel.

“Einstein’s violin is a particularly precious and exciting item to handle," said Chris Albury, senior auctioneer. "When it arrived for analysis and valuation the violin’s sound post and bridge were both detached and it had not been played for a very long time."

"It is spine-tingling to think that [Einstein] would have been playing pieces by his beloved Mozart and Bach while his young mind was thinking through his revolutionary ideas, many of which still underpin so much scientific and technological research today."

"I expect we will get private and institutional interest from around the world and we will only find out what will happen come the auction day itself."

You can hear more details about the sale below.