War ended in May 1945 and the central third of Germany - including the eastern part of Berlin - became the Soviet occupation zone, relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany). In 1945 Werner Laux took work as an employee with the local party leadership team for Berlin-Reinickendorf. In April 1946, following a contentious political merger, a new party was launched, and Laux was one of hundreds of thousands of Communist Party members who immediately signed their party membership over to the new &lt;a href="Socialist%20Unity%20Party%20of%20Germany"&gt;Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED)&lt;/a&gt;, which now became the ruling party in a new kind of German one-party dictatorship. Between 1946 and 1948 Werner Laux headed up the Käthe Kollwitz Arts Academy ("Käthe-Kollwitz-Kunstschule") in Berlin-Reinickendorf. During 1948/49 he served as a senior arts administrator for the in Mecklenburg.