Researching Nils Vogt

He was born in Christiania (now Oslo) as the son of tramway director Jens Theodor Paludan Vogt (1830–1892) and writer Johanne Collett (1833–1906). He was great-nephew of Jonas Collett and second cousin of Johan Vogt (1858–1932), Nils Vogt (1859–1927), Paul Benjamin Vogt (1863–1947) and Ragnar Vogt (1870–1943). His family first lived at St. Hanshaugen, Vestre Aker, before they in 1877 moved into a newly constructed villa in Josefines gate, Homansbyen. According to his biographer in Norsk biografisk leksikon, Hans H. Skei, he grew up in a conservative upper-class environment, but opposed "authorities and conservative attitudes". At a young age he joined the Liberal Party and penned radical articles to newspapers at the age of seventeen. After a failed matric course, his family sent him to Hamar where he took examen artium in 1884.

For a short period of time, Vogt taught at a manor house in Värmland, before he started studying law. He discarded the law studies in favor of poetry writing for the periodical Nyt Tidsskrift. Vogt thereupon travelled to Copenhagen, where he met Christian Krogh and made his debut with the poetry collection Digte (lit. "Poems"). He published the novel Familiens sorg in 1889, which was based on his own childhood and conflicts with his father. He had planned to write a resume of the novel, but he soon realised that the intellectual conditions in the 1890s were better for poetry than for fiction.

Following his father's 1892 death, Vogt travelled to the Italian island Capri. In 1894, he published the poetry collection Fra Vaar til Høst ("From Spring to Autumn"), which according to Skei represented his "final breakthrough". In the same year, he married Siri Maria Thyselius (1854–1936), with whom he lived at her homeplace. In the following decades, Vogt wrote many poems and plays, and also a few novels. His autobiography Fra gutt til mann ("From Boy to Man") was published in 1932, and is amongst his best known works. His wife died in 1936, and he moved to Lillehammer, where he died on 23 December 1937.

He was born in Hakadal, and is a cand.jur. by education. During World War II, while still in secondary school, he was imprisoned in Grini concentration camp between 10 June and 20 September 1943.

He worked at the Norwegian embassy in the United States from 1957 to 1961, for Norges Eksportråd from 1961 to 1965, at the Norwegian embassy in Belgium from 1965 to 1966 and as vice president of Federation of Norwegian Industries from 1966 to 1972. In 1972 he was assistant secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Industry, from 1973 to 1975 he worked in the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and from 1975 to 1980 he worked with petroleum at the Norwegian embassy in Iran. He was assisting director and director in the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) from 1980 to 1984 and 1984 to 1988, before rounding off his career as the Norad representative in Maputo.