author
F. A. (Frederick Augustus) Voigt
1892–1957
A sharp-eyed journalist who spent years reporting from Germany and became one of Britain’s strongest early critics of dictatorship, he wrote with unusual clarity about the dangers gathering in Europe before the Second World War.
1 Audiobook
Combed Out
by F. A. (Frederick Augustus) Voigt
About the author
Born in Hampstead, London, on May 9, 1892, to parents of German background, Frederick Augustus Voigt studied mathematics at University College London before his life was interrupted by the First World War. During the war he was interned in Britain because of his ancestry, an experience that left a lasting mark on his political thinking.
Voigt joined the Manchester Guardian in 1919 and soon became its correspondent in Berlin, where he reported on the political, social, and economic upheavals of the Weimar years. His dispatches and later books earned attention for their early, forceful warnings about authoritarianism, nationalism, and the persecution spreading across Europe.
He went on to become known as a serious commentator on foreign affairs and as an independent critic of both fascism and other forms of totalitarian rule. He died on January 8, 1957, but his work remains notable for its moral urgency and for the way it tried to make European events understandable to British readers.