Kurt Bork

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Kurt Bork (center) at an exhibition opening on March 20, 1965 in East Berlin.

Kurt Bork (born August 27, 1906 in Berlin ; † September 25, 1975 there ) was a German politician of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He had been Deputy Minister of Culture since 1962 and was ousted in 1973 after a theater reform he had designed was rejected by the party and state leadership.

Life

Bork, the son of a worker and a tram conductor, lived in a half-orphanage from 1915 to 1920. He attended elementary school and from 1920 received commercial training in the Berlin company Getreide-Lagerhaus Spreehof GmbH . From 1923 he worked as a commercial clerk in the company and was then managing director from 1940 to 1945. Bork was active in communist youth organizations from 1920, became a member of the Volksbühne in 1921 and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1932 . At a young age he founded his own playgroup with some members of the Volksbühne and, in addition to an abundance of texts, wrote two large choral works that were performed in Berlin in the Großes Schauspielhaus and in the Volksbühne. The Junge Volksbühne performed the play “Der Plünderer” and several radio plays were broadcast in Berlin, Vienna, Beromünster and Munich.

After the end of the Second World War , Bork was head of the Berlin-Lichtenberg Cultural Office until 1946 . In 1945 he rejoined the KPD and became a member of the SED as a result of the forced unification of the SPD and KPD into the SED . Until 1949 Bork was an employee of the public education department at the Magistrate of Greater Berlin , first in the theater department , then head of the performing arts department , and then until 1951 chief consultant for theater in the GDR Ministry of Popular Education .

From 1951 to 1954 Bork was head of the performing arts department in the State Commission for Art Affairs and lecturer at the Potsdam-Babelsberg Film Academy . In 1952 he completed a course at the German Academy for Political Science and Law . From 1954 to 1958 Bork was head of the main performing arts department and from 1959 to 1962 department head in the Ministry of Culture of the GDR , where he was a member of the central party leadership.

From 1962 to 1973 Bork was the GDR's deputy minister for culture. Until 1969 he was responsible for theater, music, education, art, school facilities and events. From 1962 to 1968 he was a member of the central board of the art union of the GDR and from 1966 to 1971 a member of the board of the association of theater workers . In 1968 Bork completed a further training course at the Institute for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED .

In the late 1960s, Bork became an important sponsor of the Berlin and Leipzig theaters, the Berlin Ensemble and the Komische Oper . After the violent suppression of the Prague Spring , Bork came into conflict with the party and state leadership. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED rejected a theater reform that it had designed in the GDR and deprived him of responsibility for the GDR's theaters. In 1969, Bork took over the department of fine arts, monument preservation and international relations in the Ministry of Culture of the GDR. In April 1973, officially for reasons of age, he was replaced as Deputy Minister of Culture. Then he was chairman of the board of trustees of the Kulturfonds der DDR .

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sponsor of the theater arts - Kurt Bork will be 60 years old tomorrow . In: Neue Zeit , August 26, 1966, p. 4.
  2. ↑ Farewell to the Deputy Minister for Culture . In: Neues Deutschland , April 25, 1973, p. 2.
personal data
SURNAME Bork, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED), Deputy Minister for Culture of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1975
Place of death Berlin