Although Kurz studied at the theological seminary in Tübingen (1831–35), he gave up his position as a minister to earn his living as a writer. Failing at that, he became a librarian at the University of Tübingen. He produced translations of Ludovico Ariosto's epic Orlando furioso (1840–41) and, from the Middle High German, of Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan und Isolde (1844), Kurz was also active between 1843 and 1854 as a political and literary journalist and as editor of the democratic newspaper Der Beobachter in Stuttgart.