Duden

In 1872, Konrad Duden, then headmaster of a Gymnasium (secondary school), had his treatise Die deutsche Orthoschrift ("German orthography") published by B.G.

[5] Often known as the Schleizer Duden – the author was then the headmaster of a Gymnasium (secondary school) in Schleiz, now in Thuringia — the work significantly influenced a debate about German spelling and became the template for subsequent dictionaries.

[6] This first "Duden" collected 28,000 keywords on 187 pages and subsequently prevailed throughout the German Empire as a standard reference work.

After World War II this tradition continued separately in East and West Germany, in Leipzig and Mannheim, respectively.

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.

The East German Duden included various loan words from Russian, particularly in the area of politics, such as Politbüro and Sozialdemokratismus.

Furthermore, additional words were recorded as a result of the increasing number of adverbs and adjectives negated with the prefix un-, such as unernst ("unserious") and unkonkret ("un-concrete", "irreal").