Career
During his career he was an ophthalmologist in Neustrelitz, Berne and Rostock. At the University of Rostock he was initially an honorary professor (1866), and from 1869 a regular professor and chair of the ophthalmology clinic. When efforts to build his own clinic in Rostock failed, he resigned his professorship in 1889 and moved to Munich.
Zehender is considered a pioneer of ophthalmic microsurgery, as in 1886 he introduced the practice of using a compound binocular vision instrument for ophthalmologic examination.