German gardener from Stolberg am Harz, Saxony who went to the Botanical Garden at Leiden to gain further experience under Herman Boerhaave. He travelled to South Africa in 1747 and was employed as an assistant in the garden of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC or Dutch East India Company) at Cape Town by Hendrik Swellengrebel. Under the following governor, Rijk Tulbagh, he was promoted to Superintendent and encouraged to travel and collect including participating in the expedition of Capt. Hendrik Hop to the Karas Mountains and Namaqualand (1761-1762). He travelled with C.P. Thunberg as guide (1772-1773) and met F. Masson and A. Sparrman on their visits to South Africa.

A collection of plants made by Auge was purchased by M. Grubb, banker and director of the Swedish East India Company, during his return from a visit to China (1764). This same material was later sent to P.J. Bergius and provided much of the basis for his Descriptiones Plantarum ex Capite Bonae Spei, though Bergius did not distinguish Auge collections from specimens collected by Grubb in his herbarium (SBT).

Auge retired from the VOC on a small pension in 1778, when his eyesight began to fail and he eventually became completely blind. When the Cape Colony was ceded to Britain, Auge lost his pension and he became destitute when his possessions were destroyed during a raid by Xhosa. He was taken in by the farm of A.A. Faure in Swellendam where he was visited by M.H.K. von Lichtenstein in 1804. Auge was commemorated by the genus Augea Thunb. in the Zygophyllaceae and by Phyllopodium augei Hiern (= Manulea augei (Hiern) Hilliard).