However, the division of postwar Germany had already been pre-agreed by the victorious war leaders and in July 1945 the Americans withdrew: the region became part of the Soviet administered occupation zone.
He enrolled at the Workers' and Farmers' faculty in Leipzig, later switching to the city's university where he studied, and in 1949 obtained his degree, in social sciences.
[1] Between 1949 and 1957 he worked at the Ministry for Foreign and Inter-German Trade after the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched, in October 1949, as the German Democratic Republic.
[2] He entered the diplomatic service in 1957 and served, till 1963, as commercial attaché and deputy head of the East German trade mission in Moscow.
Horst Bittner died aged 85 on 16 April 2013 and was buried in the protestant Georgen-Parochial Cemetery II in Berlin.