In 1944, having passed the necessary entrance exam, he was offered and accepted a student place at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Before he could take it up, however, he was conscripted for military service, and sent to join a mountain regiment based in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. After the war ended in May 1945 there could be no question of returning home to Silesia, due to the ethnic cleansing of 1944/45. Landeshut, hitherto ethnically mixed, became known by its Polish name, as Kamienna Góra, and was repopulated by Polish expellees from former eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union and settlers from central Poland. Breiter relocated to Salzburg, which would be his home for the rest of his life. Legally he was stateless. In 1946 he took the entrance exam for admission to the Fine Arts Academy in Salzburg. This was a precondition for his residence permit and subsequent application for citizenship. It is unclear from the sources whether he was ever offered a student place: he certainly never enrolled at the Salzburg academy.