After leaving school he spent his military service in 1961/62 with the Bundesmarine and left as reserve fenrik.

From 1980 onwards Sander appeared on several of Berlin's theatre stages, among others at the Schillertheater in 1981, at the Freie Volksbühne in 1985 and in 1989 at the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm.

Among his best-known film roles are the angel Cassiel in Wings of Desire and its sequel Faraway, So Close!

by Wim Wenders, and a shell-shocked U-boat commander, Kapitänleutnant Philipp Thomsen, in Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot.

Sander also appeared in The Tin Drum (1979) as a trumpeter and in Comedian Harmonists, a biopic about the musical group of the same name.