Karl Zeiler, the maintainer of the German dictionaries extensions (de_DE, de_AT, de_CH), has replaced version 2012-06-10 (bundled extension 'dict-de' in LibO 3.5.5.3 / LibO 3.6.0.2rc) with version 2012-06-17. The German thesaurus (version 2012-06-10; thesaurus snapshot 2012-06-08 23:35) can not handle words like 'Spaß, weiß, heiß, Schweiß, Soße, Blöße, mäßig, Größe', etc. (all words with 'ß' = U+00DF LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S: Eszett). Selecting a word with 'ß' has the following result: - Synonyms: (none) - Thesaurus: No alternatives found. This bug doesn't occur in the German dictionaries extensions (de_DE, de_AT, de_CH), version 2012-06-17 (thesaurus snapshot 2012-06-15 23:20). The corrected extensions are available on http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/german-de-de-frami-dictionaries http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/german-de-at-frami-dictionaries http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/german-de-ch-frami-dictionaries
Reproducible with - LibO 3.6.0.4 release (Build ID: 932b512) - LibO 3.5.6.2 rc (Build ID: e0fbe70-5879838-a0745b0-0cd1158-638b327)
Andras Timar committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/dictionaries/commit/?id=b1cb648dc31f2406edf02eb3f7d75c298954ccb0 fdo#52374 update German Thesaurus (2012-06-17)
Andras Timar committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "libreoffice-3-6": http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/dictionaries/commit/?id=868b353c385a155456a118549e86e6a050bbc1df&g=libreoffice-3-6 fdo#52374 update German Thesaurus (2012-06-17) It will be available in LibreOffice 3.6.1.
Andras Timar committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "libreoffice-3-5": http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/dictionaries/commit/?id=d3d96469cab3644813cced84bc743686c7bbc053&g=libreoffice-3-5 fdo#52374 update German Thesaurus (2012-06-17) It will be available in LibreOffice 3.5.7.
VERIFIED FIXED with LibO 3.6.1.1 (Build ID: 4db6344), German langpack installed, on MacOS X 10.6.8 (Intel). Synonyms and Thesaurus work (again) for words Spaß, heiß, mäßig, Soße etc.