Konrad Duden's Schleizer Duden (1872) and Urduden (1880) In 1872, Konrad Duden, then headmaster of a ''
(secondary school), had his treatise Die deutsche Orthoschrift
("German orthography") published by B.G. Teubner in Leipzig. That book included both a dictionary and spelling rules for school use. Often known as the Schleizer Duden
—the author was then the headmaster of a '' (secondary school) in
Schleiz, now in
Thuringia—the work significantly influenced a debate about German spelling and became the template for subsequent dictionaries. Eight years later, having moved to a grammar school in
Hersfeld as headmaster, Konrad Duden's main work was published, considerably expanded from the
Schleizer Duden. The first edition of this new work, ''
(Complete Orthographical Dictionary of the German Language
), later sometimes referred to by the publisher as Urduden
, was published in Leipzig and was the first major complete dictionary of German. This first Duden'' collected 28,000 keywords on 187 pages and subsequently prevailed throughout the German Empire as a standard reference work. From 1892, its spellings also became binding in Switzerland.
From 1901 to 1996 In 1902, the
Bundesrat confirmed the
Duden as the official standard for German spelling;
Austria-Hungary and
Switzerland soon followed suit. In the ensuing decades, the
Duden continued to be the de facto standard for German
orthography. After
World War II this tradition continued separately in
East and
West Germany, in
Leipzig and
Mannheim, respectively. In West Germany, some publishing houses began to attack the Duden "
monopoly" in the 1950s, publishing dictionaries which contained alternative spellings. In reaction, in November 1955, the ministers of culture of the
states of Germany confirmed the spellings given by the
Duden would continue to be the official standard.
East German Duden (Leipzig) In 1954, the first published
Duden appeared in
Mannheim, the western counterpart to the traditional
Duden printing city of
Leipzig. The first
East German Duden appeared in Leipzig in 1951, but was largely ignored as illegitimate by
West Germany. The printing continued in both Mannheim and Leipzig until the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989. The differences between the two versions of
Duden printed during this period appear in the number of entries. When the printing of the two Dudens began, in 1954 and 1951, the number of entries included was roughly the same. As the split between the printers versions continued, the East German Duden slowly began diminishing the number of entries in its volume while the West German
Duden printed in Mannheim increased the number of entries. The major differences between the two Dudens are seen in the lexical entries. The East German
Duden included various loan words from Russian, particularly in the area of politics, such as and . Also new to the East German
Duden were words stemming from Soviet agricultural and industrial organization and practices. Of note, there are a few
semantic changes recorded in the East German
Duden that evolved from contact with
Russian. The East German
Duden records the
nominalization of German words by adding the
suffix , borrowed from the Russian language suffix. Furthermore, additional words were recorded as a result of the increasing number of
adverbs and
adjectives negated with the prefix , such as ("unserious") and ("un-concrete", "
irreal"). The few lexical and semantic items uniquely recorded in the East German Duden migrated from '''' because the printing press in Leipzig did not publish the multiple volume Duden which has become the current standard.
Reform Duden On the cover of the
Duden, 25th Edition, Volume 1, these words are printed in red letters: ''
. This translates as: "The comprehensive standard reference based on the current official rules''." The "current official rules" are the result of the German orthography reform of 1996. ==Volumes==