"… FROM YOUR SUBMERGENCE IN THE GENIUS OF THE PAST, WHOSE HAPPY HEIRS WE ARE, A NEW GENIUS WILL EMERGE, WHICH SHOWS US THAT GOD DOES NOT DETERMINE THE ELEMENTARY EVENT WITH THE CUBE, BUT CONTROLS CAUSALITY IN THE PERFECTION THAT WAS POSTULATED BY NEWTON, EVEN THE MOLECULAR PREHISTORY…": GELEGENTLICHES, SIGNED BY ALBERT EINSTEIN

EINSTEIN, Albert. Gelegentliches. Zum Fünfzigsten Geburtstag 14. März 1929 Dargebracht von der Soncino-Gesellschaft der Freunde des Jüdischen Buches zu Berlin. Berlin: Soncino, 1929. Octavo, original paper boards with japanese vellum spine, uncut. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $18,000.

Limited first edition, one of only 800 copies, with frontispiece photographic portrait, this copy signed by Einstein and dated in the year of publication on the title page.

Gelegentliches (in English, roughly, "Occasional" or "Occasional Pieces") collects excerpts from Einstein's writings (such as "It is not easy to associate a clear meaning with the word scientific truth. Thus the meaning of the word, truth, differs depending on whether it is an experience fact, a mathematical proposition or a scientific theory" and "The highest task of the physicist is to seek out those most general elementary laws, from which by pure deduction the world picture can be won. No logical path leads to these elementary laws, but only intuition based on feeling in experience"), not just on science but also history and politics, and includes a section on his thoughts on "the Jewish Question." One section, on "Neun Fragen Über das Eigene Schaffen" (Nine Questions About Your Own Work), asked of Einstein by a Japanese journalist, was only printed here. The book was printed and privately distributed by the Soncino Society in honor of Einstein's 50th birthday. Founded in 1924, the Soncino Society was a Jewish Bibliophile organization devoted to the typographic improvement of the Jewish and Hebrew book; it was forcibly disbanded by the Nazis in 1937.

Text with a few minor stains, marginal wormholing, not affecting text. Boards with a few faint water stains, wormholing mostly on bottom board. Very rare and desirable, the first copy we have seen signed by Einstein.