F
A Voigt - January 1937
FAV's life
and ideas have been better documented than those of any other members of the
family (except perhaps Professor Franz Reuleaux). Following the creation
of this website, much new information has come to us from sources in Germany
and the US. Dr Markus Huttner, a historian at Leipzig University, has
worked extensively on the thesis that the German National-Socialist and the
Russian Communist ideologies, which were so powerful in the mid-20th Century,
were in essence secular religions, and has published "Tortalitarismus
und säkulare Religionen. . . " (Bonn, 1999), in which FAV is portrayed
as an important precursor of current thinking on totalitarianism He has also
written the entry on FAV for the new edition of "The Dictionary
of National Biography", to be published in 2004. A correspondent in Seattle,
whose mother was greatly assisted in the 1930s by FAV's first wife,
Margaret Goldsmith, has provided photocopies of that part of David
Ayerst's "Guardian - A Biography of a Newspaper" (1970) that describes
FAV's activities as a journalist, together with photocopies of two
of his reports in "The Manchester Guardian", and a photocopy of
a description (in German) by Grete Fischer in her autobiography ("Dienstboten,
Brecht und andere Zeitgenossen in Prag" (Freiburg / Br, 1966) of her
friendship with FAV in Berlin and London. FAV's journalism is
highly praised in "The British Press & Germany 1936-1939" by
Franklin Reid Gannon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
Frederick Augustus Voigt was born in Hampstead on 9 May 1892, the fourth
child of Ludwig Reinhard and Else Voigt. He was christened Fritz,
but he chose to be called Frederick, Uncle Fred to us, Freddy Voigt to his
friends and fellow-journalists.. He was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School
in London and at Birkbeck College (now part of London University), where he
at first studied biology, but changed to modern languages in which achieved
a first-class honours degree. He has been described as speaking fluent but
foreign German and as having taught himself Latin, Greek and Anglo-Saxon.
He was married three times, first to the American lawyer and writer Margaret
Goldsmith (born 1894), secondly to the Hungarian violinist Janka Radnitz
(1897-1977) with whom he had a daughter Evelyn Elizabeth (our only
cousin, 1935-), and thirdly to Rachel Bennett (1906-1983). He died
on 8 January 1957, aged 64.
In 1914 the Principal of Birkbeck College strongly recommended him to C
P Scott, the famous editor of the "Manchester Guardian" (as
it then was), but the First World War intervened, and he did not join the
paper until 1919. Instead he taught modern languages for a year at Abbotsholme
School in Staffordshire. In 1916 he was conscripted into the Army, and served
for three years with the Royal Garrison Artillery. His wartime experiences,
and his then inclination towards pacifism, prompted him to write "Combed
Out" (London: The Swarthout Press, 1920), one of the earliest war books,
which he published under his initials "F A V".
On 2 February 1920, , after a spell in the Advertising Department, he was
sent by the "Manchester Guardian" to Berlin. At first he was assistant
to the Berlin Correspondent, J G Hamilton, whom he had coached in German
before the War, but when Hamilton was soon afterwards transferred to
Paris, FAV became the paper's Berlin Correspondent, a post he retained
for 10 years, and that he filled with great distinction.
His uncompromising exposure of, and opposition to, Hitler and the horrors
of German National-Socialism ("the bloodshot darkness of Hitler's Third
Realm" is one of his memorable phrases) led to his life being threatened,
and there is somewhere an account of his having to leave Berlin for Paris
secretly and hurriedly in 1933. His courage though was never in question.
In the early 1920s he incurred the wrath of the German Army, and at one point
he was kidnapped and the wall around him peppered with bullets. Negley
Farson wrote in his "Way of a Transgressor" that FAV's
account of the Polish elections in c1929 was "so frank and fearless that
the Polish Government had a case against the 'Manchester Guardian' . . . .
but he would be burned at the stake rather than be frightened off a story".
He had built up a comprehensive network of informants in Germany, and he continued
throughout the 1930s to publish the truth about National-Socialism. He left
Paris in 1934, and from then until 1940 he was the Diplomatic Correspondent
of the "Manchester Guardian", a post created for him, and in which
he pursued his crusade against the dictatorships.. From 1938 to 1946 he edited
the influential monthly journal "The Nineteenth Century and After",
in which he was able not only to continue his political writings, but also
to indulge his love of English poetry, his interests in biology and botany,
and his Anglicanism. In 1935 and 1938 he broadcast in the BBC National Programme
on events in Germany. and he wrote occasionally for other newspapers under
the pen-name Quinton Varley. During the late 1930s he founded, wrote, and
even helped to print, a newsletter, "The Arrow", in which, since
it was distributed only to known supporters, he could state his views with
complete freedom.
His three political books, "Unto Caesar" (London: Constable, 1938),
"Pax Britannica" (London: Constable, 1949) , and "The Greek
Sedition" (London: Hollis & Carter, 1949), dedicated respectively
to his daughter Evelyn Elizabeth Voigt, "To the Memory of J
G Hamilton", and "To the Memory of those who fell at Konitsa",
are, or should be, his lasting monument. They encapsulated his long experience
of European politics, both from his own personal observations and from those
of a wide circle of friends, which with his German ancestry, a powerful intelligence,
considerable linguistic skills, a trenchant hand with a pen (not literally
though - his handwriting was all but illegible), a fervent patriotism, his
religious sense, and his wide knowledge of literature in many languages, gave
him a deep insight into the problems that Europe and the Atlantic alliance
faced before, during and after the War.
"Unto Caesar"
(Matthew 22, 21: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,
and unto God the things that are God's") is a fierce and detailed condemnation
of what in 1938 he saw as the two secular religions, Russian Communism and
German National-Socialism, both evil, both powerful, both immensely dangerous.
The book was important enough to be reprinted twice within a month of publication,
to have a second edition in October 1938, and a third in November 1939. National-Socialism
was eventually defeated as it had to be but at enormous cost, and Russian
Communism collapsed in 1990 under the weight of its own contradictions.
Although his "Pax Britannica'" has also been overtaken by events,
it remains essentially a statement of his considered views on Britain's responsibilities
and place in the world, and much of it is still relevant. For example (p541):
"The purpose of foreign policy is not to promote freedom, justice, humanity,
democracy, civilisation, Christianity, an idea or a Weltanschauung, or the
Rule of Law . . . those responsible for the conduct of foreign policy . .
. are responsible for one matter, and one matter only - the security of England.
. ."
"The Greek Sedition" is a detailed account of the ruthless methods
by which the Communists after the War attempted to take power in Greece; they
were in fact defeated almost at the last ditch.
"The Times" obituary refers to "Hauptmann und Shakespeare"
that it says he wrote with a W A Reichart, but of which I
have no knowledge.
Margaret Goldsmith, his first wife, was an American lawyer, born in
1894, who had been educated in Germany, spoke the language "flawlessly",
and was a prolific author and translator. Together they wrote the biography
"Hindenburg - The Man and the Legend" (London: Faber & Faber,
1930)
"In his heyday",
Dr Huttner has written, "Voigt was a celebrity among the
British foreign correspondents. Due to his incorruptible veracity and his
philosophical and theological erudition he was better able than most of his
contemporaries to face the stark reality" of Europe's terroristic regimes.
I had thought that 60 years later, FAV's ideas had been forgotten,
but they have not been.