The Archives' Holdings

The Archives hold currently close to 75.000 items, many of them originals from Einstein's estate. The material is held in a secure and climate controlled facility. The items have been scanned at low level and can be retrieved electronically. In the near future, a project to scan all items in high quality and in color will be launched. Information about the progress will be posted on this website.


Original material in storage


The Archives' Holdings Database

The Albert Einstein Archives, in conjunction with our partner organization Einstein Papers Project (EPP), based in Pasadena, California have developed a common database that you can access from the Internet.

Click on the following link to access it:

The Albert Einstein Archives Online
Common Archives database AEA and EPP



The Archives' Holdings Folder List

The Archives' holdings are organized by folders, many of them arranged according to subjects, a great help when engaging in preliminary research. You can see a general overview below.



Click on the following link to access it:

Folder List


Textual material is divided into three main groups:

Scientific material:
Manuscripts of Einstein's scientific papers and lectures, his correspondence with scientific colleagues and his lecture notebooks. This material includes the original manuscripts of Einstein's articles on such topics as the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and the unified field theory. It also contains his correspondence with the most important physicists of the 20th century, e.g., Max Plank, Niels Bohr, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger and Hendrik A. Lorentz.

Non-scientific material:
Manuscripts of articles, speeches, lectures, poems and aphorisms as well as correspondence dealing with matters outside the field of science such as politics, society, philosophy and culture. This material includes Einstein's writings on such subjects as pacifism, Judaism, the nuclear threat, and civil rights as well his correspondence with famous contemporaries, e.g., Sigmund Freud, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walther Rathenau, Thomas Mann, Bertrand Russell and Albert Schweitzer.

Biographical material:
Einstein's personal documents, family correspondence and travel diaries.




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