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What is the Past Perfect Tense (Plusquamperfekt)?
The past perfect expresses that an action occurred before a specific point in time in the past. When you are telling a story about the past and want to mention something that happened before that, use the past perfect.
Luckily for you, it is used the same way as in English (i.e. "Before I moved to Germany, I had already started learning German" or "At 6 pm, I had already arrived at the party")
The past perfect is also called the Plusquamperfekt or Vorvergangenheit.
Examples:
- „Beim Fußballturnier schoss Jan drei Tore.“ (Simple Past - Präteritum)
- „Er hatte vorher viel trainiert.“ (Plusquamperfekt)
- „Als er zu Hause angekommen ist (Perfekt), hatte sie schon gegessen.“ (Plusquamperfekt)
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How to Form the Plusquamperfekt?
The past perfect is constructed with „sein“ and „haben“ (conjugated in the simple past) + the Past Participle (Partizip 2).
Choose between „sein“ and „haben“ like you would for the perfect tense: for movements from A to B, changes of state, and the Verbs „sein“, „werden“ and „bleiben“ use „sein“ as the helping verb.
For everything else, and all reflexive verbs, use „haben“ as the helping verb.
Signal Words for the Plusquamperfekt
There are certain words that signal you to use the Plusquamperfekt:
Nachdem:
- „Nachdem er die Prüfung bestanden hatte, hat er erstmal gefeiert.“
Bevor:
- „Bevor ich das Auto gekauft habe, hatte ich lange gespart.“
Als:
- „Als ich ankam, waren alle schon gegangen.“
Recommendation: Formation of Past Participle (Partizip 2)
Theoretically, at this level you should have no more problems with the Partizip 2. But if you want to refresh your knowledge, you can take a look at how the Partizip 2 is formed with regular and irregular verbs here: Past Participle (Partizip 2)
Informal Language and the Plusquamperfekt
When speaking informally, many people (including native speakers!) use the perfect or simple past instead. It is grammatically incorrect, but still very common.
Correct: „Er hat das Rennen gewonnen. Er hatte vorher viel trainiert.“
Common (but wrong): „Er hat das Rennen gewonnen. Er hat vorher viel trainiert.“
So don't worry too much about it if you hear your German friends or colleagues using the other form. But if you're taking an exam, make sure to use the Past Perfect!
Related Topic:
Entire lesson in German only: Plusquamperfekt
Some verbs you have to separate when you conjugate them - Trennbare Verben (Separable Verbs).
More lessons about Tenses:
- Perfekt (Perfect Tense)
- Präteritum (Past Tense)
- Präsens (Present Tense)
- Futur 1 (Future 1)
- Futur 2 (Future 2)
What is the general German word order? - Satzbau (Sentence Structure).
You can find an overview of all topics under German Grammar.
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