Standard unnamed parameters as used in the German original:

*{{NDB|Vol|Start page|End page|Biographed person|Author of biography|GND number}}

End page may be left blank when the NDB article only appears on a single page.

Additional named parameters (see the {{citation}} documentation for more details)

|postscript=defaults to the value in {{citation}} — it can be altered to another value
|ref=either defaults to Author of biography, year
                        — or if the unnamed "Author" (parameter 5) is not set it
            defaults to NBD, year
                        — like the other parameters the default values can be overridden
                          (which can be useful when used with {{harv}} and {{sfn}}
                          templates (see more than one work in a year). 
|year=defaults to a value set by the unnamed Vol (parameter 2).
                        — it can be altered to another value, which is sometimes
                          useful in combination with the parameter and value ref=harv.

{{NDB|13|656|657|Lasker, Eduard|Klaus Erich Pollmann|118569848}}

produces:

Klaus Erich Pollmann (1982), "Lasker, Eduard", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 13, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 656–657; (full text online)

{{NDB|1|299||Anna Jagjello|Obermayer-Marnach, Eva|133664473}}

produces:

Obermayer-Marnach, Eva (1953), "Anna Jagjello", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 1, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 299; (full text online)

If you want to use several authors with separately specified first and last names, an option is to use

{{cite NDB|20|502|504|Planta||last1=Deplazes-Haefliger|first1=Anna-Maria|last2=Brunold|first2=Ursus|121979652}}

(note the double || that means the unnamed "author" parameter is left empty) to produce

Deplazes-Haefliger, Anna-Maria; Brunold, Ursus (2001), "Planta", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 20, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 502–504; (full text online)

The template does not include an item bullet and so is easy to use in a footnote citation. In a list, the template should be preceded by an asterisk, as specified in the usage section above.

• {{Cite ADB}} for the corresponding template used with Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie