War ended in May 1945, putting an end to the Nazi régime and leaving the central portion of Germany administered as the Soviet occupation zone, to be relaunched and rebranded in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Lippmann attended school locally between 1943 and 1955, the year in which he passed his school final exams ("Abitur"), an exam result which in due course would clear the path to university level education. For the next five years he worked in the region's coal and ore mines. Sources describe him as a coal face worker. Nevertheless, there was also the opportunity to study, and in 1960 he emerged from the Zwickau with and engineering degree.