No idea if this is authentic, but I can't imagine any reason why such a letter would be in English.

Fake. See snopes.com/einstein-rejection-letter & iqballatif.newsvine.com/_news/2016/04/25/…

Aww. That was quick! I saw some results saying it was real, and whatnot and some saying the opposite. Kind of sad that a lot of people on facebook and reddit are fed this. Doesn't seem right!

University of Bern communicating in English prior to Allied victory in 1945? That should be enough to prove it fake.

See also "The Einstein forgery" (Univ. Bern)

Got here from the hot network questions. Took me a while to realize this wasn't skeptics.stackexchange.

@NiCkNewman I recommend changing the accepted answer from mine to the more detailed one.

aside from the fact it's in English, it should be obvious no academic higher-up would write such clumsy sentences in such a letter. clearly written by some doofy kid.

@NSNoob What on Earth would allied victory in 1945 have to do with any of this...?! Do you think all universities dropped their native languages and started composing all their letters in English the day of the armistice? In Switzerland of all countries? This is a ridiculous comment.

@NajibIdrissi - I believe his point was that English could not possibly have even entered into this equation before 1945. You are right that it would also be unlikely after 1945, but laughably so before then. After the war, a lot of European Universities did start adopting English as one of their official languages, so it would at least possible.

Also - on the subject of "wrong language" - the stamp on the letter says "University of Bern". This educational institution is located in the Canton of Bern, whose two official languages are French and German, so the stamp should either say "Universität Bern" (German) or "Université de Berne" (French) (or perhaps "Universitas Bernensis" (Latin)).

@NajibIdrissi The point is allied victory in 1945 helped usage of English language abroad as Ted has explained better than I could.

Additionally - according to Snopes there has never been a professor named "Wilhelm Heinrich" at the University of Bern. I'll also note that in Germany there was certainly not a "Ph.D." degree in 1907 - the equivalent would probably be a "Dr. rer. nat." (Doctor rerum naturalium - literally "Doctor of natural things" - all natural sciences, mathematics and computer science).

Since when does the University of Bern use the coat of arms of Hungary? (besides English to communicate with a German)

I would think that the postage stamp would give it away. Why would they have a postage stamp that has Albert Einstein's face and name on it?

Yes, the stamp contains the coat of arms of Hungary. At the time (in 1907), Hungary and Austria were the largest parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose official languages were both of German and Hungarian. I suspect, the forger had some contact, or at least a minimal research on the topic and found the Coat of Arms on the Switzerland -> Austria -> Hungary connection. Btw, I would be also surely close out that a German-speaking University had communicated on English to a native German speaker, it would be nearly unthinkable even today.

Btw, Austro-Hungarian official documents didn't contain that Coat of Arms, even the government used the Coat of Arms of the Monarchy (another name of the Empire), which is a different one.

lmfao at this entire image. How was there ever any doubt? There are so many things blatantly wrong with this.