Breakdown of Als wir kamen, war er bereits gegangen.
sein
to be
kommen
to come
wir
we
gehen
to go
als
when (past single event)
bereits
already (formal)
Questions & Answers about Als wir kamen, war er bereits gegangen.
Why does this sentence use war ... gegangen instead of hatte ... gegangen?
The Past Perfect (Plusquamperfekt) follows the exact same rules as the regular Present Perfect when choosing the helper verb. Since gehen (to go or leave) expresses a change of location, it takes sein (to be) rather than haben. To form the Past Perfect, we simply use the past tense of sein (war) along with the past participle (gegangen).
Why is the word order war er and not er war in the second half of the sentence?
The first part, Als wir kamen, is a subordinate clause that takes up the entire first position of the main sentence. Because the main verb must always sit in the second position, war comes immediately after the comma, pushing the subject er right behind it.
Why do we use Als for "When" here instead of Wenn?
In German, als is strictly used for a single, specific event that happened in the past, like arriving at a specific time in this story. You would only use wenn in the past tense if you meant "whenever" to describe a repeated event.
Could I use schon instead of bereits?
Absolutely! Both bereits and schon mean "already" and are completely interchangeable here. bereits sounds just a little bit more formal or written, while schon is very common in everyday spoken German.
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