The Past Perfect Tense in German

In German, to express an action that occurred in the past, you can use the present perfect (Perfekt), simple past (Präteritum), or past perfect (Plusquamperfekt). Among these, the past perfect (Plusquamperfekt) expresses an action in the past, but in terms of time, the Plusquamperfekt occurs before the actions expressed by the Perfekt and Präteritum. Today's article will help you better understand the Plusquamperfekt.

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1. Distinguishing the past perfect from the simple past and present perfect:

- The past perfect (Plusquamperfekt) expresses an action that occurred in the past. If the present perfect (Perfekt) and simple past (Präteritum) express the past (Vergangenheit), then the Plusperfekt expresses an even more distant past (Vorvergangenheit). The past perfect expresses an action that took place before the action in the simple past and present perfect.

2. Structure: hatten/ waren + Partizip II

3. Waren oder hatten- In the structure of the past perfect tense, the use of the auxiliary verbs waren (past tense of the verb sein) or hatten (past tense of the verb haben) depends on the main verb (similar to the Perfekt tense):

+ waren goes with verbs indicating movement (gehen, fahren,...), change of state (aufstehen…) and special verbs (bleiben, passieren,...)

+ hatten goes with all remaining verbs

4. Identifying markers

- The past perfect tense (Plusquamperfekt) is often used together with temporal conjunctions such as als (when), bevor (before), nachdem (after). Example:

1. Als er nach Hause ging (Präteritum), hatte seine Frau gekocht (Plusquamperfekt).

(When he came home, his wife had already cooked.)

→ Plusquamperfekt in the main clause (Hauptsatz)

2. Nachdem Matilda umgezogen war (Plusquamperfekt), fühlte sie sich oft einsam (Präteritum).

(After Matilda moved away, she often felt lonely.)

→ Plusquamperfekt in the subordinate clause (Nebensatz) with Nachdem

3. Sie hatte Kaffee getrunken (Plusquamperfekt), bevor Julia telefoniert hat (Präteritum).

(She had drunk coffee before Julia called.)

→ Plusquamperfekt in the main clause (Hauptsatz)

!!!Note: Plusquamperfekt can be used in both spoken and written language