The Past Perfect tense
When telling a story about a trip gone wrong, you often need to explain that one thing happened before another. To do this, German uses the Past Perfect tense (Plusquamperfekt), which is the equivalent of saying someone "had done" something in English.
Forming the past perfect is straightforward if you already know the conversational past. Simply swap the present-tense helping verb (haben or sein) for its simple past form (hatte or war). The past participle of the action verb remains at the very end of the clause.
| Pronoun | haben | sein |
|---|---|---|
| ich / er / sie / es | hatte | war |
| du | hattest | warst |
| wir / sie / Sie | hatten | waren |
| ihr | hattet | wart |
Most verbs use hatte as their helping verb.
| I had canceled the flight. | Ich hatte den Flug storniert. |
| I had overslept, therefore I was late. | Ich hatte verschlafen, deshalb war ich zu spät. |
Using war for changes in state or location
Just like in the conversational past tense, verbs that express a change of location (like going or traveling) or a change of state (like expiring or falling asleep) use the helping verb sein. In the past perfect, this means you will use war instead of hatte.
| Everything had gone wrong. | Alles war schiefgegangen. |
In subordinate clauses—such as those starting with weil (because) or dass (that)—the conjugated helping verb is pushed to the very end of the sentence, sitting right after the past participle.
| He was afraid because his visa had expired. | Er hatte Angst, weil sein Visum abgelaufen war. |
| Did you notice that the strike had started? | Hast du bemerkt, dass der Streik angefangen hatte? |
Sequencing events with nachdem
A great way to structure a travel story is using the word nachdem (after).
Because nachdem introduces an event that happened before the rest of the story, its clause is the perfect place for the past perfect tense. Like weil, nachdem is a subordinating conjunction, so it kicks your helping verb to the very end of its clause.
| After it had snowed, we canceled the flight. | Nachdem es geschneit hatte, haben wir den Flug storniert. |
If the main verb in your nachdem clause is haben (to have), it will look like you are repeating yourself at the end of the sentence: gehabt hatte. This simply translates to "had had" and is perfectly correct!
| After the car had had a breakdown, we went on foot. | Nachdem das Auto eine Panne gehabt hatte, sind wir zu Fuß gegangen. |
