The unpublished story of the piano given by Einstein to his sister Maja in 1931, against the backdrop of Fascist Italy.
If objects could talk, imagine how many stories they could tell: the stories of the people they belonged to, but also the stories of the times they lived in. The story of Einstein’s piano, which passed into the hands of painter Hans Joachim Staude and is now kept at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, is studded with events that were sometimes wonderful, sometimes tragic, but never trivial. Its adventures played out alongside the lives of many men and women who had to face daily and epochal challenges, the common thread being music. Music bound their lives together in the decade in which racial laws were passed.
Through sources and images, the book retraces the relationship between Einstein and Italy and especially Florence, investigating the history of Italy during the Fascist period in relation to music, art and culture, but also the Jewish question, the war, and emigration to the United States.