The Präteritum: The Written Past
A2The written past tense — and the verbs you need it for even when speaking.
Where the Präteritum lives
Newspapers, novels, and fairy tales use the Präteritum ('er ging', 'sie sah'), not the Perfekt. In conversation you can mostly ignore it — except for sein, haben and the modal verbs, so common that their Präteritum forms are shorter and more natural than the Perfekt.
| Person | sein | haben | können | wollen | müssen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ich | war | hatte | konnte | wollte | musste |
| du | warst | hattest | konntest | wolltest | musstest |
| er/sie/es | war | hatte | konnte | wollte | musste |
| wir/sie/Sie | waren | hatten | konnten | wollten | mussten |
Beispiele — examples in context
Ich war gestern krank.
I was sick yesterday.
Als Kind wollte ich Astronautin werden.
As a child, I wanted to become an astronaut.
Weak verbs: add a -te and relax
Regular (weak) verbs form the Präteritum with a simple -te: machen → machte, machen wir → wir machten. No helper verb, no participle — this is the simplest past tense German has, which is exactly why written German loves it.
Beispiele — examples in context
Sie öffnete die Tür und sah einen Fremden.
She opened the door and saw a stranger.
Strong verbs: the vowel dance
Irregular (strong) verbs change their stem vowel: gehen → ging, sehen → sah, kommen → kam, schreiben → schrieb. You don't need to produce these in speech — you need to recognize them in writing. Reading a novel becomes dramatically easier once you can spot them.
Beispiele — examples in context
Er kam, er sah, er kaufte das T-Shirt.
He came, he saw, he bought the T-shirt.