German past tense: Perfekt or Präteritum, and when to use each

Two past tenses that mostly mean the same

English learners often expect the two German past tenses to work like “I ate” and “I have eaten”. They do not. Ich habe gegessen and ich aß describe the same finished event, and German does not use them to say whether something is still relevant now. The choice depends on the situation: talking to friends, writing a novel or reading the news.

The Grimm Grammar of the University of Texas at Austin puts it simply: the Perfekt has, for the most part, the same meaning as the simple past, and it is the past for informal interaction, while the simple past is the more formal of the two. That is why a German telling you about last weekend says “ich bin ins Kino gegangen”, while a newspaper report or a fairy tale says “sie ging ins Kino”.

For a learner, this has a practical consequence. If your first goal is to talk about your weekend, your last vacation or your working day, the Perfekt comes first, together with a small set of Präteritum forms you need from day one. The full Präteritum of every verb matters most once you start reading books, articles and reports, where it is the normal past tense.

The Perfekt: haben or sein plus the Partizip II

The Perfekt has two parts. The first is a present-tense form of haben or sein, the helping verb, which takes the normal second position in the sentence. The second is the Partizip II, the past participle, which goes to the very end of the clause. Everything else sits between the two, and this frame is one of the first things your ear learns to wait for in German.

Most verbs take haben, including every verb with a direct object. The real question for learners is the smaller group that takes sein, because there English gives you no clue at all.

When sein is the helping verb

Verbs take sein in the Perfekt when they describe a movement from one place to another or a change of state, and they do not have a direct object. Gehen, kommen, fahren, fliegen, laufen, fallen and reisen belong to the first group. Aufwachen, einschlafen, wachsen, sterben and werden belong to the second: you are in a different state afterwards. Passieren, to happen, takes sein as well: was ist passiert?

Two very common verbs take sein even though nothing moves or changes: sein itself and bleiben, to stay. So “I have been” is ich bin gewesen, and “I stayed at home” is ich bin zu Hause geblieben. Learn these two as fixed exceptions.

Some verbs switch helping verb when their meaning changes. Duden lists fahren with sein when you travel or go somewhere, and with haben when you drive or carry something: ich bin nach Köln gefahren, but ich habe meine Mutter zum Bahnhof gefahren. The direct object (meine Mutter) is the signal that you need haben.

Ich bin gestanden: the southern sein

In the south, the rule for sein reaches a little further. Duden gives the Perfekt of stehen as hat gestanden, and adds that southern German, Austrian and Swiss usage says ist gestanden. Sitzen works the same way: standard ich habe gesessen, southern ich bin gesessen. These are not mistakes but regional standard forms, so do not be surprised when you hear them in Munich, Vienna or Zurich.

How to form the Partizip II

The participle is where most Perfekt mistakes happen. The good news is that the patterns are few, and the most common verbs come back so often that you learn them quickly. Every participle belongs to one of a small number of types, depending on whether the verb is regular or irregular and what kind of prefix it has.

Regular verbs: ge- plus -t

Regular, or weak, verbs take ge- at the front and -t at the end of the stem: machen gives gemacht, kaufen gives gekauft, spielen gives gespielt, wohnen gives gewohnt. If the stem ends in -d or -t, or in certain consonant clusters, German adds an extra -e- to make the word pronounceable: warten becomes gewartet, arbeiten becomes gearbeitet and regnen becomes geregnet.

Irregular verbs: ge- plus -en, often with a new vowel

Irregular, or strong, verbs take ge- and -en, and the vowel of the stem often changes: trinken becomes getrunken, finden becomes gefunden, treffen becomes getroffen, schreiben becomes geschrieben. Some keep their vowel, like sehen, gesehen, and essen, which becomes gegessen with an extra g. There is no rule that predicts the vowel, so these participles are best learned together with the infinitive.

A small group of so-called mixed verbs combine both patterns: they change the vowel but end in -t. Bringen, gebracht, denken, gedacht, kennen, gekannt and wissen, gewusst are the ones you will use most.

No ge- at all

Two groups of verbs never take ge-. The first is every verb ending in -ieren, most of them international words: studieren becomes studiert, telefonieren becomes telefoniert, passieren becomes passiert. The second is verbs with an inseparable prefix such as be-, emp-, ent-, er-, ge-, miss-, ver- or zer-: besuchen becomes besucht, verstehen becomes verstanden, erzählen becomes erzählt and vergessen stays vergessen.

Separable verbs: ge- goes in the middle

Verbs with a separable prefix, such as aus-, an-, auf-, ein- or mit-, put ge- between the prefix and the stem. Ausmachen becomes ausgemacht, einkaufen becomes eingekauft, anrufen becomes angerufen, aufstehen becomes aufgestanden. The stress tells you which kind of prefix you have: separable prefixes are stressed (AUSmachen), inseparable ones are not (verSTEhen).

In German, the past you speak is not the past you write.

The Präteritum: the past of stories and reports

The Präteritum is a one-word past tense. Regular verbs add -te to the stem, plus a personal ending: ich machte, du machtest, er machte, wir machten. Irregular verbs change their vowel and add no -te: ich ging, ich kam, ich schrieb, ich fand. In both groups, the forms for ich and er, sie, es are identical and take no ending at all: ich war, er war, ich ging, sie ging.

A few forms are worth learning straight away because you will meet them constantly. Sein gives war, haben gives hatte and werden gives wurde. The mixed verbs keep their changed vowel with the regular -te ending: bringen gives brachte, denken gives dachte, wissen gives wusste and kennen gives kannte. The modal verbs drop their umlaut in the Präteritum: können becomes konnte, müssen becomes musste, dürfen becomes durfte.

According to the Grimm Grammar, this tense is used mainly in formal and literary written texts, such as novels, police reports and newspaper articles. Open a German book and you will find page after page of Präteritum: Es war einmal ein König, once upon a time there was a king. In those texts, a Perfekt would sound oddly chatty.

Verbs that stay in the Präteritum when you speak

A few very common verbs break the spoken Perfekt rule. With sein and haben, most speakers say ich war and ich hatte rather than ich bin gewesen and ich habe gehabt. The modal verbs do the same: ich musste, ich konnte, ich wollte, ich durfte, ich sollte. Es gab, there was or there were, is the everyday way to say what existed in the past. Wissen and denken often appear in the Präteritum too: ich wusste es nicht, ich dachte, du kommst.

Mixing the two tenses in one story is therefore completely normal: “Ich war müde, aber ich bin trotzdem ins Fitnessstudio gegangen.” The modals show why. Their Perfekt with another verb needs two infinitives at the end, ich habe arbeiten müssen, which is correct but long, so ich musste arbeiten is what you usually hear.

North and south: a matter of degree

Where you are also plays a role. The Grimm Grammar notes that north Germans often use the Präteritum for certain verbs even in speech, such as the modals, sein, haben and wissen, while southern Germans would most likely use the Perfekt. Bavarian, Austrian and Swiss speakers prefer the Perfekt, and younger speakers tend to use it more as well.

In many southern dialects, the Präteritum has largely disappeared from everyday speech, a process linguists call Präteritumschwund. In the Swiss German dialects it has been replaced by the Perfekt, so a Swiss speaker talking about the past in dialect uses the Perfekt for nearly everything. Written Standard German is the same everywhere, though: a newspaper in Zurich and one in Hamburg both report in the Präteritum.

The Plusquamperfekt: the past before the past

Duden describes the Plusquamperfekt as the tense that expresses an event that happened before another past event. It is formed like the Perfekt, but the helping verb is in the Präteritum: hatte or war plus the Partizip II. Whatever takes sein in the Perfekt takes war here: ich war gegangen, ich war geblieben.

In everyday speech, many people simply use the Perfekt for both events and let words like schon, vorher or davor show the order: ich habe vorher schon gegessen. In writing, and whenever the order matters, the Plusquamperfekt is the clearer choice.

Nachdem, after, is the classic partner of this tense: the nachdem clause takes the Plusquamperfekt, and the main clause takes the Präteritum or Perfekt. You need the Plusquamperfekt far less often than the other two tenses, but it makes the order of events clear in a story.

English speakers: watch the present perfect

Because the German Perfekt looks like the English present perfect, English speakers sometimes avoid it with a time in the past. In English you cannot say “yesterday I have worked”, but in German gestern habe ich gearbeitet is exactly right. The German Perfekt combines freely with gestern, letzte Woche or 2019.

The opposite trap is “I have lived here for three years”. German uses the present tense for something that started in the past and is still going on: ich wohne seit drei Jahren hier. The Perfekt ich habe hier drei Jahre gewohnt means the time here is over.

Common mistakes

These are the past-tense mistakes teachers correct most often at A1 and A2, and each breaks a rule from this article.

How to practice the past

Learn each new irregular verb as a set of three: the infinitive, the Präteritum and the helping verb with the participle, as in fahren, fuhr, ist gefahren. Saying the helping verb out loud every time is what fixes the haben or sein choice in your memory, far better than a list of rules.

Then use the tenses the way Germans do. Tell someone about your weekend in the Perfekt, with war and hatte where they fit, and read a short story in the Präteritum to get used to its forms. At Alimun, you talk about your week in live classes with a teacher and the same small group, and flashcards with the words from your classes, participles included, are ready after each lesson.

Questions people ask

Sources: Grimm Grammar (UT Austin): Perfekt, Grimm Grammar (UT Austin): irregular verbs with sein, Grimm Grammar (UT Austin): simple past, Duden: stehen, Duden: fahren, Duden: Plusquamperfekt.