War, which had returned in 1939, formally ended in May 1945. Leipzig was now included in the large central portion of what had been Germany that was administered as the Soviet occupation zone (relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany)). It was not till June 1948, as his wife lay dying, that Arthur Liberasch was permitted to return to Lepizig. He lost no time in joining the Socialist Unity Party (SED), formed - if only in the Soviet zone - a couple of years earlier through a contentious merger of the old Communist Party and the Social Democrats. He now applied for recognition as a "Fighter against Fascism" ("Kämpfer gegen den Faschismus" / KgF). His application was turned down in January 1949 by the Mayor's Control Commission of the Municipal Section for Victims of Fascism". Walter Ulbricht, with whom he had clashed in the 1920s when they were both members of the Leipzig Communist Party, was by now the most powerful German in the Soviet occupation zone, as was a man with a famously long memory. However, Lieberasch lodged an objection with the appropriate appeal court and was recognised as a KgF in September 1949. The month he was given a job as a payroll clerk with VEB Vesta, a Leipzig-based iron and steel producer.