After the war Hartung returned to Homberg where he had grown up. Under plans already agreed between the leaders of the governments controlling the victorious armies, the western two thirds of Germany was divided into military occupation zones. Despite having been liberated from the Hitler government by US troops, Leipzig, hitherto home to the Supreme Court, was administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone . Homberg was in the , to which millions of Germans had fled from eastern and central Germany during the closing weeks of the war. In August 1945 Fritz Hartung was arrested, presumably on account of his position as a high court judge during the Hitler years. At the end of May 1946 he was released, after an investigating tribunal had declared him "entlastet" ("loosely, "exonerated""). During the final part of 1946 he accepted a teaching position at the University of Marburg where he remained till 1948. In 1948 it became known that he had actually at some point become a member of the Nazi Party and he was dismissed on orders from the "Liberation Ministry" in Wiesbaden. After this he supported himself, at least in part, as a writer and commentator. Despite a certain amount of ensuing confusion on the matter, a new panel subsequently confirmed the initial verdict as to his party membership.