EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955). Autograph letter signed to Thea Stein-Lewinson, n.p., n.d. [postmarked Saranac Lake, 4 September 1942].

One page, 181 x 133mm, with the original transmittal envelope addressed in his hand.

On Hitler's handwriting. Einstein offers his thanks to the co-author of a book which became the foundation for scientific handwriting analysis: "I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interesting little book (interressantes Büchlein). It was interesting to me that it is possible to classify handwriting in such an exhaustive manner. I also appreciated that you were able to separate out so clearly the objective characteristics from the purely 'intuitive,' which theory, which, incidentally, should not be unduly discredited by Hitler (das übrigens durch Hitler nicht gar zu sehr in Misskredit geraten sollte)."

When Stein-Lewinson's Handwriting Analysis was published in 1942, it was a landmark in the study of graphology. She had been working in the field since 1935 studying under the Klage system of handwriting. The 1942 volume was, in Einstein's works "exhaustive," as it included numerous charts, graphs and tables to outline twenty-two measurable features of handwriting that separate the objective from the merely intuitive. Einstein regarded Hitler as a lunatic, writing on that very subject the previous day.* Yet it appears that Stein-Lewison's work did not classify Hitler's as that of a lunatic, prompting Einstein to mockingly suggest that this omission should not discredit the entire model. Provenance: Christie's, New York, 17 June 2003, lot 1246.

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*Einstein to Frank Kingdon, 3 September 1942. "…If Hitler were not a lunatic he could easily have avoided the hostility of the Western powers. That he is a lunatic is the sole advantage in the present sinister picture of the world…."