Das Passiv

The passive voice in German moves the receiver of an action to the front of the sentence and pushes the doer into the background or out of the picture. German has not one but two passives, and they describe different things. The Vorgangspassiv, built with werden and a past participle, describes the action being done. The Zustandspassiv, built with sein and a past participle, describes the state that results when the action is finished.

A learner needs both. They look almost identical on the page and they mean very different things.

The two passives

The contrast is sharpest with a single sentence pair.

Das Haus wird gebaut. The house is being built.

Das Haus ist gebaut. The house is built. (it stands there finished)

The first sentence puts you on the construction site. Workers are moving, walls are going up, the action is in progress. The second sentence puts you in front of a finished building. The work is over; what remains is the result.

English collapses both into “is built” and relies on context. German keeps them apart, and the choice of auxiliary tells the reader which one is meant. Whenever you see werden plus a participle, the sentence is about the action. Whenever you see sein plus a participle, the sentence is about the result.

This single contrast is the whole concept. Everything that follows is forms, tenses, and the cultural fact that German prefers to avoid the passive when it can.

The Vorgangspassiv across all tenses

The action passive uses werden as its auxiliary, conjugated in whichever tense the sentence needs. The past participle of the main verb sits at the end of the clause.

Two things in this table are worth pausing on.

First, the Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt of the passive use worden, not geworden. Werden normally has geworden as its participle (Er ist alt geworden, “he has grown old”), but when werden is the passive auxiliary, the ge- drops. The reason is purely acoustic: stacking gewaschen and geworden in the same sentence would put two unstressed ge- syllables next to each other, and German trims one. The form worden is reserved exclusively for the passive.

Second, Futur I in the passive piles three verbs at the end (gewaschen werden preceded by wird). Native speakers find it heavy and avoid it. In practice, the Präsens often does the work of the future when context makes the time clear: Das Auto wird morgen gewaschen (“the car gets washed tomorrow”) rather than Das Auto wird morgen gewaschen werden.

The Zustandspassiv

The state passive uses sein as its auxiliary. It does not have its own table of tenses to learn separately, because it is just sein in whichever tense plus the participle. The most common forms are Präsens and Präteritum.

Die Tür ist geschlossen. (The door is closed.) Die Tür war geschlossen. (The door was closed.) Die Tür ist geschlossen gewesen. (The door has been closed.)

The Zustandspassiv looks identical to a sein-plus-adjective construction, and historically that is what it is. Geschlossen started life as a participle and ended up doing double duty as an adjective describing a state. Many participles work this way: geöffnet, gedeckt, verloren, gefunden, gebrochen, müde, fertig, kaputt. The line between participle and adjective is not always sharp, and it does not matter for the learner. What matters is recognising that sein plus a participle describes the state after the action, not the action itself.

The agent: von versus durch

When the passive includes a doer or cause, German has two prepositions for it.

Von + Dativ introduces an animate agent: a person, an institution, an animal, anyone or anything that acts intentionally.

Das Buch wurde von Goethe geschrieben. The book was written by Goethe.

Der Brief wird von einem Freund gebracht. The letter is being brought by a friend.

Durch + Akkusativ introduces an instrument or an impersonal cause: the means by which the action happens, not the conscious doer.

Das Haus wurde durch ein Erdbeben zerstört. The house was destroyed by an earthquake.

Die Nachricht wurde durch das Radio verbreitet. The news was spread by the radio.

In practice the line blurs. Some sentences accept either, with a slight shift in nuance. Der Brief wurde durch die Post geschickt (“by the postal service”) feels slightly more impersonal than von der Post. When in doubt, native speakers use von for people and durch for things, and that rule covers most cases.

Passiv with modal verbs

Modal verbs combine with the passive in a stack that puts three verbs into the sentence: the modal in second position, the past participle of the main verb at the end, and werden in its infinitive form just after the participle.

Das Haus muss gebaut werden. The house has to be built.

Die Aufgabe sollte heute gemacht werden. The task should be done today.

Diese Tür kann nicht geöffnet werden. This door cannot be opened.

In Präteritum the modal moves into its past form; the rest stays the same.

Das Haus musste gebaut werden. The house had to be built.

In a subordinate clause the whole verbal cluster moves to the end and the modal goes last.

Er sagt, dass das Haus gebaut werden muss. He says that the house has to be built.

This is the construction in safety signs, instructions, regulations, and bureaucratic prose. Müssen and sollen in particular live almost exclusively inside passive sentences when they appear in print.

The subjektloses Passiv

German allows something English does not: a passive sentence with no grammatical subject at all. It works only with intransitive verbs (verbs without a direct object) and it expresses a general activity rather than something done to someone.

Hier wird nicht geraucht. There is no smoking here.

Heute wird gearbeitet. Work is being done today.

In der Bibliothek wird leise gesprochen. Quiet voices in the library. (literally: in the library is spoken quietly)

There is no thing being smoked, worked, or spoken; the verb itself is the whole content. The passive promotes the activity to the position normally occupied by a subject.

When a passive verb needs a subject in first position to satisfy German’s V2 word order, a dummy es slides in:

Es wird heute gearbeitet. There is work being done today.

But the es is only a placeholder. As soon as anything else takes the first slot, es disappears:

Heute wird gearbeitet. (no es) Hier wird nicht geraucht. (no es)

This is why public-space signs in German often look agentless. Bitte nicht stören. Hier wird gebaut. Achtung: Es wird scharf geschossen. The form is short, official, and impersonal, which is exactly what a sign wants to be.

Word order

In a main clause, werden takes the second position like any other finite verb, and the past participle goes to the end.

In a subordinate clause introduced by dass, weil, wenn, als, and the rest, werden moves to the very end, after the participle.

Er sagt, dass das Haus gebaut wird. He says that the house is being built.

Ich weiss nicht, wann das Haus gebaut wurde. I don’t know when the house was built.

In Perfekt and Plusquamperfekt the cluster stretches to three verbs, and they line up in the order participle, worden, auxiliary.

Er sagt, dass das Haus gebaut worden ist. He says that the house has been built.

Alternatives to the passive

Native German prose reaches for the passive less often than English prose does. There are four standard escape hatches; a learner who recognises them can read German without tripping over the absence of a passive where English would have one.

1. Man + active verb

The pronoun man (literally “one”, but used the way English uses generic “you” or “they”) lets you make a general statement in the active voice.

Hier raucht man nicht. No smoking here. (literally: one does not smoke here)

In Deutschland trinkt man viel Bier. In Germany people drink a lot of beer.

This is the construction native speakers reach for first, especially in conversation. Hier wird nicht geraucht and Hier raucht man nicht mean the same thing; the man version is more spoken, the impersonal passive is more official.

2. Reflexive constructions

A reflexive verb with sich can carry passive meaning when the subject is a thing that “does itself”.

Das Buch verkauft sich gut. The book sells well.

Die Tür öffnet sich automatisch. The door opens automatically.

The thing being sold or opened is the grammatical subject, but no one is doing the selling or opening on screen. English does the same trick with intransitive uses of transitive verbs.

3. Sein + zu + infinitive

This construction expresses necessity or possibility passively. Sein zu plus an infinitive means roughly “must be” or “can be”, depending on context.

Der Brief ist zu schreiben. The letter must be written. (or: is to be written)

Diese Aufgabe ist leicht zu lösen. This task can easily be solved.

It is a stiffer construction, common in legal and administrative writing, and worth recognising when it appears. The corresponding modal-passive (Der Brief muss geschrieben werden) means the same thing in plainer language.

4. Bekommen-Passiv (B2 polish)

A more advanced construction lets the indirect object of a giving-verb become the subject of a passive built with bekommen or kriegen.

Ich bekomme das Buch geschenkt. I am given the book as a gift.

Sie kriegt einen Brief geschickt. She is sent a letter.

This construction has no clean parallel in standard English passive grammar. It is colloquial in kriegen form, neutral in bekommen form, and a marker of fluent speech. Most learners pick it up at B2 or later.

How writers use it

Kafka is the test case. Der Process opens with a Vorgangspassiv that has no agent: …wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet. Someone has arrested Josef K., but the sentence refuses to name them. The whole novel keeps doing this. K. is summoned, watched, examined, judged, and finally executed; the system that does these things stays out of the syntax. When K. acts for himself (looking, asking, walking, deciding) the sentences switch to active. The grammatical contrast carries the book’s argument: agency belongs to the institution and is denied to the individual. Die Verwandlung and Das Schloss use the same trick. Things happen to Gregor; things happen to K. the surveyor. The passive is Kafka’s signature mood.

Goethe’s Werther uses the passive differently. Werther’s letters are full of impersonal es wird-constructions when he wants to make general claims about love, society, or nature without putting himself in the sentence. Es wird viel gesprochen, viel gefühlt, viel gehofft. He hides behind the passive when his observations would feel grandiose in the first person. Then he switches to first-person active for his own feelings. The passive carries the philosophy; the active carries the heart.

Spyri’s Heidi sits at the other end. Spyri uses both passives gently, mostly in narration of farm work: hay being raked, cows being milked, the table being set. Her sentences pair Vorgangspassiv (the action) with Zustandspassiv (the result) in clean alternation, which makes the children’s book a useful first encounter with both forms in the same scene.

Goethe’s Faust and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (in the German adaptation) use the passive with modal verbs heavily for moral and philosophical statements: Das muss verstanden werden. Das kann nicht zugelassen werden. The form gives weight to abstract claims without naming who is doing the demanding or forbidding.

What you don’t need to do

You don’t need to use the Futur I passive in your own speech. Das Auto wird gewaschen werden is grammatical and almost no one says it. Use the Präsens with a time word instead: Das Auto wird morgen gewaschen.

You don’t need to translate every English passive into a German one. English uses the passive freely; German does not. A sentence like English is spoken here is more naturally rendered Hier spricht man Englisch or Hier wird Englisch gesprochen. The first feels more conversational. Defaulting to passive every time will make your German sound translated.

You don’t need to master bekommen-Passiv at B1. Recognise it when you see it. Producing it well takes B2-level intuition for register.

You don’t need to obsess over von versus durch. Use von for people, durch for things, and accept that some sentences accept either. Native speakers do not always agree on borderline cases.

You don’t need to use Zustandspassiv for everything that ends in a participle. Many sein-plus-participle constructions are simply sein-plus-adjective by now (Ich bin müde, das Glas ist voll, die Tür ist offen). The Zustandspassiv label is grammatical; the meaning is just “is in a certain state”.

Common confusions

• Worden versus geworden. In the active, werden has geworden as its participle: Er ist alt geworden (he has grown old). In the passive, the participle is worden: Das Auto ist gewaschen worden (the car has been washed). If you remember the rule “passive worden, active geworden”, you will not mix them up.
• Vorgangspassiv versus Zustandspassiv. Beginners use sein where they should use werden and produce sentences like Das Haus ist gebaut when they mean Das Haus wird gebaut. The English “is built” covers both, so the choice has to be made in German that English does not force.
• Passive of intransitive verbs (subjektloses Passiv). Learners often try to make a personal subject for Hier wird gearbeitet by adding jemand or die Leute. Resist. The point of the construction is the absence of a subject. Add nothing.
• Forgetting the dummy es. When the impersonal passive sits at the head of a sentence and nothing else fronts the V2 slot, the es is required: Es wird heute gearbeitet. As soon as a time or place fronts the sentence, the es drops: Heute wird gearbeitet.
• Modal-passive word order in subordinate clauses. In dass-clauses the modal goes last, after the infinitive plus werden: Er sagt, dass das Haus gebaut werden muss. Beginners often write …muss gebaut werden, which is correct in main clauses but not in subordinate ones.
• Translating English “by” with the wrong preposition. “Destroyed by fire” is durch Feuer, not von Feuer. “Written by Goethe” is von Goethe, not durch Goethe. The tell is animacy.

Where you’ll meet it in the library

The passive runs through German fiction wherever an institution, a force of nature, or a fate is acting on a character. The richest first encounters are Kafka and Goethe.

• Heidi (A1). Spyri uses both passives in her narration of farm work, often in the same paragraph. Hay is gathered, the table is set: action in werden-passive, state in sein-passive, side by side.
• Grimms Märchen (A1). Fairy-tale narration in Präteritum, with passive constructions for things done by ogres, witches, and fate. Der Wolf wurde getötet. Die Tür wurde geöffnet. Cleanly agentless.
• Die Verwandlung (A2+). Gregor is the receiver of nearly every action in the novel. The passive appears whenever his family acts on him without consulting him.
• Der Process (A2+). The opening sentence is a Vorgangspassiv without an agent, and the novel never lets up. A long exposure to the passive as a literary mood.
• Das Schloss (A2+). K. the surveyor spends the novel having things done to him by the castle’s bureaucracy. The passive is the syntactic shape of the institution.
• Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (B2). Werther’s letters use the impersonal passive constantly for general statements about love and society, and Zustandspassiv for the settled inner states he describes.
• Faust (B2). Modal-passive constructions carry the philosophical claims: Das muss verstanden werden. Es kann nicht zugelassen werden. Worth reading aloud for the rhythm of the verbal cluster at the end.
• Frankenstein (B2). The German adaptation preserves the layered narratives, each of which uses the passive when the speaker is reporting events that happened to them rather than choices they made.