Breakdown of Wegen der Strafe wird oft geweint.
oft
often
weinen
to cry
wegen
because of
werden
to be (passive auxiliary + past participle)
die Strafe
the fine
Questions & Answers about Wegen der Strafe wird oft geweint.
Where is the subject in this sentence?
This sentence uses the impersonal passive voice to focus entirely on the action of crying, rather than who is doing it. When another phrase takes the first position (here, Wegen der Strafe), German drops the subject completely! If you wanted to start the sentence with the action, you would use a dummy subject instead: Es wird oft geweint.
The translation says 'People often cry', but there is no word for 'people' here. Why?
English grammar strictly requires a subject, so we have to insert a generic word like 'people' or 'they' to make sense of the sentence. German's impersonal passive (wird ... geweint) elegantly expresses that an action is happening without needing to name an actor at all. It is literally closer to 'Because of the fine, crying is often done.'
Why is it der Strafe if die Strafe is a feminine noun?
The preposition wegen (because of) requires the genitive case. In the genitive case, the feminine article die changes to der. Fun fact: in casual spoken German, wegen is often used with the dative case, which for feminine nouns also happens to be der Strafe!
Can I build this type of passive sentence with any verb?
Not quite! The impersonal passive is used for intransitive verbs (verbs that don't take a direct object) that express an active human action, like weinen (to cry), tanzen (to dance), or lachen (to laugh). You cannot use it with state verbs like sein (to be) or verbs of happening like passieren (to happen).
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