Kurth, who had strong links with the German Centre Party and with German colleagues, was repulsed by the German invasion of Belgium and the accompanying atrocities. Over the summer and autumn of 1915 he gathered testimony of the atrocities, including the killings at Aarschot, but was placed in detention by the Germans in an unheated location. He contracted pneumonia, and died at Asse on 4 January 1916. He was provisionally buried in Asse, and later exhumed and reburied in Arlon. There are streets named after him in both Arlon, Asse and Liège.