Breakdown of Der Historiker, dessen Buch wir lesen, kommt aus Deutschland.
das Buch
the book
Deutschland
Germany
kommen
to come
aus
from / out of (made of)
wir
we
lesen
to read
dessen
whose (m/n)
der Historiker
the historian
Questions & Answers about Der Historiker, dessen Buch wir lesen, kommt aus Deutschland.
The lesson covers using dessen to mean 'his' and avoid ambiguity. Why does it translate to 'whose' here?
German uses the exact same word for both jobs! While you have been practicing dessen as a demonstrative pronoun to mean 'that other guy's', it also serves as the genitive relative pronoun meaning 'whose'. Here, it links the relative clause back to the masculine noun Der Historiker.
Could we just use sein instead of dessen?
No, because sein (his) cannot connect a relative clause to a main clause. Just as English forces you to use 'whose book' rather than 'his book' to glue the sentence halves together, German requires the relative pronoun dessen.
What case is Buch in this sentence?
The noun Buch is in the accusative case because it is the direct object of the verb lesen (since wir is the nominative subject). Even though the pronoun dessen is genitive to show who owns the book, the entire phrase dessen Buch takes the accusative case role within the relative clause.
Why is lesen placed at the very end of the middle phrase?
The phrase dessen Buch wir lesen is a relative clause. Like all subordinate clauses in German, it forces the conjugated verb (lesen) to the very end of that specific clause, right before the comma that brings us back to the main sentence.
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