SANDERS, DANIEL (1819–1896), German lexicographer, was born on the 12th of November 1819 at Altstrelitz in Mecklenburg, of Jewish parentage. He was educated at the “Gymnasium Carolinum” in the neighbouring capital Neustrelitz, and the universities of Berlin and Halle, where he took the degree of doctor philosophiae. From 1842 to 1852 he conducted with success the school at Altstrelitz.
In 1852 he subjected Grimm’s Deutsches Wörterbuch to a rigorous examination, and as a result published his dictionary of the German language, Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (3 vols., 1859–1865). This was followed by his Erganzungswérterbuch der deutschen Sprache (1878–1885). Among others of his works in the same field are Fremdwörterbuch (Leipzig, 1871; 2nd ed., 1891), Wörterbuch der Hauptschwierigkeiten in der deutschen Sprache (1872; 22nd ed., 1892) and Lehrbuch der deutschen Sprache für Schulen (8th ed., 1888). Sanders laid down his views in his Katechismus der deutschen Orthographie (1856, 4th ed., 1878), and was an active member of the orthographical conference in Berlin in 1876. He published a translation in verse of the Song of Songs (1866), and wrote some poems for the young, Heitere Kinderwelt (1868). In 1887 he founded the Zeitschrift für die deutsche Sprache, which he conducted almost down to his death at Altstrelitz on the 11th of March 1897.
See Friedrich Düsel, Daniel Sanders (1886; 2nd ed., 1890); A. Segert-Stein, Daniel Sanders, ein Gedenkbuch (1897).