Once you can build the basic werden-passive (Das Haus wird gebaut), German still has a whole second tier of passive and passive-like constructions that look strange to English speakers. This page synthesizes them: the passive of dative verbs (which keeps a dative and has no nominative subject at all), the impersonal passive of intransitive verbs, the recipient bekommen/kriegen-passive, and the competitor constructions sein + zu + Infinitiv, sich lassen + Infinitiv, and man. Together they form the advanced passive system. (For the basic forms and tenses, see the werden-passive page; here we build on it.)
The passive of dative verbs: no subject required
This is the single biggest stumbling block. In the active voice, verbs like helfen, danken, gratulieren, folgen, antworten, and zuhören take their object in the dative, not the accusative. Only an accusative object can become the nominative subject of a passive. So when you passivize a dative verb, the dative stays dative, and the resulting sentence has no nominative subject whatsoever.
Man half mir.
Someone helped me. (active — 'helfen' takes the dative 'mir')
Mir wurde geholfen.
I was helped. (passive — 'mir' stays dative; there is no nominative subject and 'werden' defaults to 3rd-person singular 'wurde')
Because there is no subject to occupy first position, German often inserts a dummy es at the front when nothing else fills it — but the es vanishes the moment another element (here, mir) moves into first position.
Es wurde mir geholfen, als ich es am wenigsten erwartete.
I was helped when I least expected it. (dummy 'es' holds first position; 'mir' is still dative)
Dem Sieger wurde herzlich gratuliert.
The winner was warmly congratulated. ('gratulieren' is a dative verb, so 'dem Sieger' stays dative in the passive)
The impersonal passive of intransitives
German can passivize even verbs that take no object at all — pure intransitives like tanzen, arbeiten, lachen, schlafen. The result is the impersonal passive, which describes an activity in the abstract, with no agent and no patient. English has no equivalent; we must paraphrase with "there was" or "people were."
Gestern wurde bis Mitternacht getanzt.
There was dancing until midnight yesterday. (impersonal passive of intransitive 'tanzen' — no subject, no object)
Es wurde den ganzen Tag gearbeitet.
People worked all day. / There was work going on all day. (dummy 'es' + impersonal passive of 'arbeiten')
In der Bibliothek wird nicht gesprochen!
No talking in the library! (impersonal passive used as a sign — a common real-world use)
The impersonal passive is especially common on signs and rules, where the point is precisely to forbid or describe an activity without naming who does it: Hier wird nicht geraucht ("No smoking here").
The bekommen / kriegen-passive: the recipient becomes subject
Here is German's most elegant passive trick. With verbs of giving and showing (geben, schenken, zeigen, erklären, versprechen), the active sentence has a dative recipient and an accusative thing. The ordinary werden-passive promotes the thing to subject (Das Buch wurde mir geschenkt). But German has a second option: the bekommen-passive (colloquially kriegen-passive), which promotes the recipient to subject instead.
| Construction | Example | What becomes the subject |
|---|---|---|
| Active | Man schenkt mir ein Buch. | — |
| werden-passive | Das Buch wird mir geschenkt. | the gift (the thing) |
| bekommen-passive | Ich bekomme ein Buch geschenkt. | the recipient (the person) |
The recipe is bekommen / kriegen + Partizip II. English handles this only with a clunky "I get/got X done to me" or "I had X given to me."
Ich bekomme das Buch geschenkt.
I'm getting the book as a gift. (recipient passive — 'ich' is the subject, 'geschenkt' is the participle)
Sie kriegt die Regeln noch mal erklärt.
She's getting the rules explained to her again. (informal 'kriegen'-variant — same construction)
Nach dem Unfall bekam er den Führerschein entzogen.
After the accident, he had his licence taken away. (the person who lost the licence is the subject)
Passive with modals and in subordinate clauses
A passive infinitive is just Partizip II + werden (gebaut werden, "to be built"). Drop it after a modal, and you get a modal passive; in a subordinate clause, the whole verb cluster moves to the end in a fixed order.
Der Antrag muss bis Freitag eingereicht werden.
The application must be submitted by Friday. (modal + passive infinitive)
Sie sagte, dass die Rechnung schon bezahlt worden sei.
She said the invoice had already been paid. (passive in a subordinate clause — note the verb cluster 'bezahlt worden sei' at the end)
sein + zu + Infinitiv: the modal passive substitute
German has a compact construction that means "can/must be done": sein + zu + Infinitiv. It is passive in sense (the subject is what gets acted on) and carries a modal flavour of possibility or necessity, read from context.
Das Problem ist leicht zu lösen.
The problem can easily be solved. ('ist zu lösen' = 'kann gelöst werden' — possibility reading)
Diese Aufgabe ist bis morgen zu erledigen.
This task must be completed by tomorrow. ('ist zu erledigen' = 'muss erledigt werden' — necessity reading)
Whether it reads as "can" or "must" depends on context; leicht/schwer/kaum push it toward possibility, deadlines and obligations push it toward necessity.
sich lassen + Infinitiv: the "lets itself be" passive
sich lassen + Infinitiv expresses passive possibility — that something can be done — and is extremely common in everyday German, often replacing the heavier kann ... werden.
Das lässt sich machen.
That can be done. / That's doable. (idiomatic — literally 'that lets itself be done')
Der Fleck lässt sich nicht entfernen.
The stain can't be removed. ('sich lassen' passive — common in everyday speech)
man: the lexical agentless alternative
Finally, the simplest agentless device is just the indefinite pronoun man ("one / you / people / they"). It keeps the sentence active and is far more frequent in speech than a full passive. Choosing between man and the passive is itself a register decision (covered on its own page); broadly, man feels lighter and more spoken, the passive more formal and more focused on the action itself.
Man hat mir nicht geholfen.
Nobody helped me. / I wasn't helped. (active with 'man' — a lighter alternative to 'Mir wurde nicht geholfen')
Common Mistakes
❌ Ich wurde geholfen.
Incorrect — the classic English-model error. 'helfen' is a dative verb, so its object cannot become a nominative subject.
✅ Mir wurde geholfen.
I was helped. (the dative 'mir' stays; the sentence has no nominative subject)
❌ Ich wurde das Buch geschenkt.
Incorrect — mixing constructions. To make the recipient the subject you need 'bekommen', not 'werden'.
✅ Ich bekomme das Buch geschenkt.
I'm getting the book as a gift. (bekommen-passive promotes the recipient)
❌ Es wurde getanzt bis Mitternacht und mir wurde geholfen es.
Incorrect — once a real element (here a time phrase or 'mir') fills first position, the dummy 'es' must be dropped.
✅ Bis Mitternacht wurde getanzt.
There was dancing until midnight. (no dummy 'es' once another element opens the clause)
❌ Das Problem kann leicht zu lösen.
Incorrect — 'sein + zu + Infinitiv' uses a form of 'sein', not a modal; you cannot stack 'kann' on top of it.
✅ Das Problem ist leicht zu lösen.
The problem can easily be solved. ('ist zu lösen' already carries the modal meaning)
❌ Das macht sich.
Incorrect — the 'possibility passive' needs 'lassen': 'sich lassen + Infinitiv'.
✅ Das lässt sich machen.
That can be done. (the fixed 'sich lassen' construction)
Key Takeaways
- A dative verb (helfen, danken, gratulieren ...) keeps its dative in the passive and has no nominative subject: Mir wurde geholfen. A dummy es fills first position only when nothing else does.
- Intransitives form the subjectless impersonal passive: Es wurde getanzt; Hier wird nicht geraucht.
- The bekommen / kriegen-passive promotes the recipient to subject: Ich bekomme das Buch geschenkt — English needs "I get X given to me." kriegen is (informal).
- sein + zu + Infinitiv (ist zu erledigen) and sich lassen + Infinitiv (lässt sich machen) are passive-in-meaning modal substitutes.
- man stays active and is the lightest, most spoken agentless option.
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Start learning German→Related Topics
- The Werden-Passive (Vorgangspassiv)B1 — How to form and use the German process passive with werden plus the past participle, including the tricky Perfekt form ist gebaut worden.
- Impersonal Passive and Alternatives to the PassiveC1 — The agentless impersonal passive (Es wird getanzt) and the constructions German prefers over the passive: man, sich lassen, sein + zu, and -bar adjectives.
- Passive with Modal VerbsB2 — How to combine a modal verb with the passive in German: modal + past participle + werden, with correct word order.
- man vs the PassiveB2 — When to use the indefinite pronoun man (one/you/they + active verb) versus the werden-passive to express agentless or general actions — and why natural German uses far fewer passives than English.
- The Impersonal Pronoun manA2 — man means 'one / you / they / people in general,' always takes a singular verb, borrows its oblique forms from einer, and is German's everyday substitute for the passive.
- Light-Verb Constructions (Funktionsverbgefüge)C1 — Fixed verb + noun combinations like eine Entscheidung treffen, where the noun carries the meaning and the verb is semantically empty — the backbone of formal German.