Second term of political career
After the US Army had invaded the Province of Saxony in April 1945 the U.S. Group Control Council, Germany (precursor of the OMGUS) reappointed him land-captain of the Province of Saxony. By early July the US Army retired to allow the Red Army to take Prussian Saxony as part of its Soviet occupation zone, as agreed by the London Protocol in 1944.
On 9 July the Soviet SVAG ordered to merge of what before 1933 had been the land of Anhalt, two Bezirke of the Prussian province of Saxony, Halle-Merseburg, and Magdeburg, and some Brunswickian eastern exclaves and salients into the Land of Saxony. The third Bezirk of Prussian Saxony, the Erfurt governorate, had become a part of Thuringia. Then the SVAG appointed Hübener as the president of the Province of Saxony, a newly created function based in Halle upon Saale.
In the summer of 1945, Hübener became one of the co-founders of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD) in Halle upon Saale. He also received a chair at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Although he had signed, as Soviet-appointed official, the Soviet-inspired expropriation ordinance on 3 September 1945, pretendingly aim at Nazi war criminals and other circles (largely real estate holders, often of noble descent) uniformly identified as apt for expropriation, he criticized the abuse of the expropriation ordinance as a free ticket to completely destroy property structures and certainty of law.
On the occasion of the first only election in the Soviet zone, allowing parties to compete for seats in provincial and state parliaments, on 20 October 1946, the Province of Saxony has renamed the Province of Saxony-Anhalt, reflecting the prior merger. On 3 December 1946, the members of the provincial parliament elected Hübener the first minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt with the votes of CDU and LDPD. This made him the only governor in the Soviet zone, who was not a member of the Communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). As such, he was an inconvenience to the Soviet occupation authorities.
By threatening the SVAG to resign from office, Hübener enforced the participation of the Soviet zonal governors in the Conference of Governors in Munich on 5 June 1947, which last time convened the elected governors of all states from all four zones of occupation in Germany. Hoping to avoid the eventual establishment of separate German republics – which was underways with the Bizone – he was, however, disappointed by his Western colleagues (among them his long-time fellow party member Reinhold Maier, then minister-president of Württemberg-Baden). Most of them were already assured that the constitution of a democratic and autonomous German republic can impossibly include the Soviet zone with their puppet states, whereas the zonal central administrations (Zentralverwaltungen) established in July 1945, staffed with communists and directed by the SVAG, were taking the decisions.
While Easterners hoped with a quadripartite Allied agreement there would be the chance that the Soviet Union will release its prey, many Westerners had already come to another conclusion. However, for Westerners, the perpetuated stay of their respective occupying power had by no means the same meaning in everyday life as the Soviet occupation in their zone.
Hübener then saw himself fighting a losing battle. In May 1949, speaking on the third term of Deutscher Volkskongress, a quasi-parliament deciding the first constitution of the to-be-founded separate East German republic, Hübener appealed as the main speaker of LDPD to the delegates: Our future government shall, will, and must learn, to stand with a free people on the free ground. While West Germany had been founded on 23 May 1949 the foundation of East Germany was planned for 7 October. On 1 October Hübener resigned from office. He was succeeded by Werner Bruschke (SED).
