Free Relatives and Universal Concessives (wer, was, wo + auch immer)

A free relative is a relative clause with no head noun: instead of der Mann, der das sagt ("the man who says that"), German says wer das sagt ("whoever says that"). The relative pronoun and its missing antecedent are fused into one word — wer, was, or wo. Add (auch) immer and the same machinery turns into a universal concessive: wer auch immer ("no matter who"). This page explains how these headless clauses are built, why they produce a case conflict that English never has to think about, and how German resolves it.

What a free relative is

In an ordinary relative clause, the pronoun refers back to an explicit noun. In a free (or "headless") relative, that noun is gone and the wh-word carries the meaning of the missing head itself. Wer means "the person who," was means "the thing that," wo means "the place where." Like every subordinate clause in German, the verb goes to the end.

Free relatives are perfectly everyday German — Wer zuerst kommt, mahlt zuerst ("First come, first served," literally "Whoever comes first grinds first") is a proverb every speaker knows. They are not a high-register oddity; they simply happen to involve a structure that trips up learners.

The case conflict English never sees

In English, "whoever" has only one form. Whether it is the subject or the object of either clause, you write "whoever" (and "whom-ever" is dying). German wh-words decline — wer / wessen / wem / wen — and a free relative pronoun has to satisfy two clauses at once: the role it plays inside the relative clause, and the role the whole clause plays in the matrix clause.

When both clauses demand the same case, there is no problem:

Here wen is accusative in both clauses, so it stays wen, and an optional den (the demonstrative) resumes it in the matrix.

The trouble starts when the two clauses want different cases. Consider "Whoever insults me, I forgive (them)." Inside the relative clause the pronoun is the subject, so German wants nominative wer; in the matrix clause the whole expression is the direct object of vergeben (which actually takes the dative), so it wants dem. German cannot put both into one word. The standard resolution is to keep the case the relative clause demands and supply a separate demonstrative for the matrix case:

There is a loose hierarchy at work: the higher (more "marked") case tends to win, and when it cannot, German falls back on a resumptive demonstrative (der/den/dem) to carry the matrix case. Native speakers do not consult a rule — they feel which clause is "louder" — but as a learner you have a reliable escape hatch: when in doubt, satisfy the relative clause's case in the wh-word and let a demonstrative pick up the matrix case.

The universal concessive: wer/was/wo + auch immer

Add (auch) immer to the wh-word and the meaning shifts from "the one who" to "no matter who / whoever it may be." This is the universal concessive: it concedes every possibility at once. Auch and immer are written as separate words, and immer can also stand alone (wer immer) in more literary style; the everyday spoken form is wer auch immer.

Notice in Was du auch sagst that auch does not have to sit next to the wh-word — it can drift into the middle of the clause. Was auch immer du sagst and Was du auch immer sagst and Was du auch sagst are all natural; the more pieces you keep together at the front, the more emphatic and slightly more formal it sounds.

The case rules are the same as for plain free relatives: the wh-word takes the case its own clause assigns it. In a concessive, the clause usually just provides background, so the matrix link is looser and a resumptive demonstrative is common.

The frozen idiom: Wie dem auch sei

One universal concessive has fossilized into a set phrase: Wie dem auch sei — "Be that as it may." It contains an old subjunctive (sei) and the dative dem, and you should learn it whole rather than parse it.

was-relatives without a noun head

Was is also the free relative that picks up a whole preceding idea, an indefinite pronoun (alles, etwas, nichts, das), or a neuter superlative. This overlaps with the relative-pronoun page but matters here because it is genuinely "headless" reference.

Word order: still verb-final

Because all of these are subordinate clauses, the conjugated verb goes to the very end of the free relative — including in the concessives. After the comma, the matrix clause normally begins with its finite verb (V2 is counted from the whole front-loaded subordinate clause) or with a resumptive demonstrative.

Common Mistakes

English speakers reach for "whoever" as a single uninflected form. German forces you to pick the case the relative clause assigns — here lieben takes an accusative object, so it must be wen, not wer.

Because the entire free relative occupies the first position (the Vorfeld), the matrix verb must come immediately after the comma. Learners often forget this and write the matrix clause as if nothing preceded it.

Egal wer / egal was / egal wo is the colloquial cousin of wer auch immer and behaves identically: verb-final, then a full matrix clause.

Key Takeaways

• A free relative fuses the head noun and the relative pronoun into wer / was / wo; the verb still goes to the end.
• The wh-word takes the case its own clause assigns. When the matrix demands a different case, resolve the clash with a resumptive demonstrative (der/den/dem) or rebuild with derjenige, der ....
• (auch) immer turns a free relative into a universal concessive ("no matter who/what/where"); auch may sit beside the wh-word or drift into the Mittelfeld.
• Egal wer/was/wo is the everyday spoken equivalent; Wie dem auch sei is a frozen formal idiom.
• English's caseless "whoever" hides a problem German must actively solve — this is the single insight that separates a confident user from a guessing one.