who were becoming increasingly powerful. In January 1929 Lieberasch was one of many excluded from the party around that time who then became founder members of the so-called Communist Party (Opposition) ("Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Opposition)" / KPO), and devoted himself to building up the party in Saxony. In the course of desperate attempts to unify the parties of the left in order to try to block the seemingly unstoppable rise of the Nazi Party, the KPO itself fragmented, but Lieberasch was among those who remained loyal to it until (and beyond) 1933. Into exile The Nazis took power in January 1933 and lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Non-Nazis with any sort of record of political activism, especially if it involved the Communist Party or the trades union movement, were at particular risk from the authorities. During the first half of 1933 many were arrested or fled abroad. Following an instruction from the party leadership, Arthur Liberasch crossed the frontier into Switzerland and settled in Schaffhausen, then as now on the edge of a small Swiss enclave surrounded on three sides, for reasons of topography, by German territory. He lived in Schaffhausen under conditions of serious impoverishment. For as long as possible he nevertheless supported illegal antifascist work across the frontier in Germany, working on the "Schaffhausener Arbeiterzeitung" (newspaper) and organising the transfer of printed material into Germany. When first he arrived in Schaffhausen he was welcomed by Walther Bringolf, from whom he received significant support. Bringolf was a locally based leader of the Swiss Communist Party (Opposition) (" Kommunistische Partei der Schweiz-Opposition" / , KPS-O), a natural ally of the eponymous German party. After 1935, when Bringholf switched his allegiance to the Social Democrats, Lieberasch's life became more of a struggle. The workhouse found him work chopping wood. Fellow tramps knew that he was German and therefore identified him as a Nazi. There are nevertheless indications that until around 1938 Lieberasch was able to remain in touch with underground resistance groups in Leipzig. In 1939, like others in his position, he was deprived of his citizenship in absentia by the German government which left him stateless. It seems that he nevertheless received some financial support from international organisations that had been close to the German KPO in the past. After the war War, which had returned in 1939, formally ended in May 1945. Leipzig was