Koestler, Arthur

The British author and journalist Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest to a Hungarian father and an Austrian mother who were both secular Jews. The family moved to Vienna, where Koestler studied engineering until he abruptly abandoned his studies in 1926, became a Zionist and went to Palestine. Between 1927 and 1930, he was a German foreign correspondent, first in the Middle East and later in Paris. In 1931, he was the only journalist on the Graf Zeppelin polar expedition, and the same year he was sacked from his newspaper after joining the German Communist party.