Otto Körting

Otto Körting (20 May 1884 – 3 July 1959) was a German politician.

After 1933 Germany became a one-party state. Körting was a member of the SPD which in the eyes of the new government was one of the larger "wrong" parties. He was accordingly excluded from public political roles during the ensuing twelve years, spending several significant stretches of time held in state detention. In 1950, however, he again fell out of favour with the political authorities, in a second German one-party dictatorship, which ended his career, this time for good.

Life

Early years Körting was born in Jeßnitz, a small town approximately 60 km (38 miles) north of Leipzig. His father was small-scale farmer. He attended the local school in Bobbau before embarking on an apprenticeship at the photographic film factory at Wolfen, which at that time (and all the way through till 1945) was part of the Agfa company. He would continue to work for Agfa till 1933, while also maintaining a small farm.

Régime change 1 On the international stage, war ended in 1918 with defeat for Germany which led to a year of heightened political and social turmoil, followed by the adoption, in August 1919, of a relatively democratic constitutional structure. Körting embarked on a career in regional politics, standing successfully as an SPD candidate for the Anhalt regional legislature. He continued to sit as a member of the legislature (albeit with a couple of brief breaks) till April 1932. Four months later, in July 1950, he was excluded from the ruling SED itself because of alleged "reactionary activities". This was also when he lost his seat in the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt. (The Landtag itself would be abolished, along with an entire regional tier of government, less than two years later.) As an insufficiently reformed (former) Social Democrat he fell victim to a culture of party purges and false accusations. In 1952 he was arrested and held for a year in "investigatory detention". He was released after a year but never returned to politics. Otto Körting died at Dessau in the summer of 1959.