He was accordingly excluded from public political roles during the ensuing twelve years, spending several significant stretches of time held in state detention.
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.
[1] In 1902, the year of his eighteenth birthday, Otto Körting joined both the Social Democratic Party (SPD / Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands ) and the German Metal Workers' Union.
[2] 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.
With the change of government in January 1933, Körting's SPD and union activities became illegal: he resigned from all his political positions and lost his job at Agfa.
In July or August Otto Körting was arrested and placed in the Buchenwald concentration camp: sources differ as to whether his detention lasted for four months[2] or longer.
In April 1946 the controversial creation of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED / Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) opened the way for a retreat from political pluralism in the Soviet occupation zone.
Another feature that Lenin had incorporated into the Soviet Constitution was the introduction of various officially established "mass organizations", entitled to a quota of seats in national and regional legislative assemblies as a way to assert the broadest possible support for party policy.
A constitutional structure incorporating Mass movements had not yet been created even in the Soviet occupation zone as early as 1946, but in the Regional elections in Saxony, the Peasants Mutual Aid Association(VdgB / Vereinigung der gegenseitigen Bauernhilfe) participated as though it were a political party.
The months following the foundation of the German Democratic Republic coincided with heightened political nervousness on the part of the authorities as the ruling SED struggled uncompromisingly to establish de facto control over the Bloc parties.
In March 1950 Otto Körting was replaced as chairman of the VdgB's central committee because of his "uncomprehending attitude over the question of democratising the villages".