Kurt Barthel (writer)

Kurt Walter Barthel (June 8 1914, Garnsdorf – November 12 1967, Frankfurt am Main), known by his pen name Kuba, was a German writer, poet, playwright, dramaturge and state official.

[1] The same year after the Nazi Party gained power, Barthel emigrated to Czechoslovakia and there he met Louis Fürnberg on whose suggestion he wrote his first poems and stories for Die Rote Fahne.

There he earned his living as a farm and construction worker, wrote natural poems in English and became a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ).

From 1952, Bartel switched to party work, in particular, he held the post of first secretary of the Deutscher Schriftstellerverband and was a member of the Central Committee of the SED.

[1] During a tour of the Federal Republic of Germany in which 50 Rote Nelken was represented by the Rostock People's Theatre, on November 12, 1967, before 1,100 spectators in Frankfurt am Main, riots broke out by members of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), who expected a less moderate program; Barthel, who was ill with heart failure at the time, passed away in the ward and was buried in the New Cemetery in Rostock.