German hazzan (Jewish cantor) and choirmaster, founder of the Leipzig Synagogal Choir and member of the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (VVN).
Raised in Breslau he was musically educated in the synagogue choir. Later he studied music at the local Conservatory. He then worked as a private music teacher, but also conducted several choirs. On 31 October 1929, he married.
After the seizure of power by the Nazi Party in 1933 he was banned from working in his profession. In the following years he was only allowed to direct the choir of the Breslau Jewish Cultural Association. When the Jewish schools were banned, Sander could no longer teach and had to perform forced labour in the camps of Kurzbach and Grünthal in 1943 – both satellite camps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. His parents died in the concentration camps of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
When Nazi rule ended, he moved to Thuringia in November 1945, where he worked as a music teacher at a school in Meiningen. He also directed the local choral community. In 1950 he was appointed cantor to the Jewish religious community in Leipzig and conducted the synagogue choir.
He published texts for the Sabbath and Jewish festivals in phonetic writing and translated into German. Since 1954 Werner Sander also acted as cantor in Dresden and was appointed in 1962 as “Chief Cantor”. Originally created in 1951 as a chamber choir, the Leipzig Oratorio Choir, which he conducted in 1962, became the Leipzig Synagogal Choir.
Werner Sander died on 21 July 1972 in Leipzig, aged 69.
Link to Wikipedia biography (German)