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met dank aan de originele poster: DUITSTALIG

After attending trade school in Upper Silesia, Thürk began to work for the German train system (Reichsbahn). After being drafted in 1944 and participating in World War II, he returned home at the end of the war. However, he was forced to flee from Poland to Weimar. From 1946 to 1948 he worked with the Free German Youth organization in East Germany. After taking a variety of jobs, he became a journalist for a number of different newspapers and had the opportunity to work as a reporter in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and also in Korea. He claimed to have been affected by Agent Orange with lifelong effects.

He was married in 1953. Between 1956 and 1958, he worked with the Chinese magazine China Pictorial. After additional travels in East Asia between 1964 and 1980 (including Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, China), he returned to Weimar. There between 1971 and 1983 he was the chairman of the writers union in Thuringia.

In 1995 he resigned from the German PEN organization.