The passive says what happened to something without saying who did it: the house was built, not somebody built the house. German builds it from werden plus a past participle — the same participle you already know from the perfect tense.
Das Haus wird gebaut. — The house is being built.
Das Haus wurde gebaut. — The house was built.
The two tenses you need
Almost all everyday passive is one of these two.
| Tense | Formula | Example |
|---|---|---|
| present | werde/wirst/wird… + participle | Der Brief wird geschrieben. |
| past | wurde/wurdest/wurde… + participle | Der Brief wurde geschrieben. |
werden conjugates normally and the participle sits at the end, exactly where the perfect tense puts it.
| present | past | |
|---|---|---|
| ich | werde | wurde |
| du | wirst | wurdest |
| er/sie/es | wird | wurde |
| wir | werden | wurden |
| ihr | werdet | wurdet |
| sie/Sie | werden | wurden |
Turning an active sentence around
The object becomes the subject, and the verb becomes werden plus the participle.
die Tür was accusative and is now nominative, which for a feminine noun looks identical — but with a masculine one the change shows:
Der Mann repariert den Wagen. → Der Wagen wird repariert.
Saying who did it
If you want the agent back, use von plus dative for a person, and durch plus accusative for a cause or a means.
Das Haus wurde von einem Architekten gebaut. — by an architect
Die Stadt wurde durch das Feuer zerstört. — by the fire
Most of the time it is left out entirely — which is the point of the passive. German uses it heavily in instructions, news and anything official.
The trap: werden means two things
werden on its own means to become. With a participle it forms the passive. Same verb, different job, and only the participle tells you which.
| Sentence | Means |
|---|---|
| Er wird Lehrer. | He is becoming a teacher. (no participle) |
| Er wird gesehen. | He is being seen. (passive) |
| Er wird kommen. | He will come. (future — infinitive, not participle) |
Three different meanings for one verb, sorted entirely by what comes after it: a noun, a participle, or an infinitive.
Modal plus passive
The modal takes the sentence's verb slot and werden joins the participle at the end.
Das muss heute gemacht werden. — That has to be done today.
Der Wagen kann morgen repariert werden. — The car can be repaired tomorrow.
The order at the end is always participle + werden. See German modal verbs for the rest of the pattern.
man — the escape hatch
German often ducks the passive entirely by using man, which means "one", "you", "they" in the vague sense. It is far more common in speech than the passive is.
Man spricht hier Deutsch. — German is spoken here.
Man kann das nicht machen. — That cannot be done.
If a passive sentence feels heavy, man is usually what a German speaker would say instead.
sein plus participle is a different thing
werden + participle is an action happening. sein + participle is a finished state.
Die Tür wird geöffnet. — The door is being opened. (it is happening now)
Die Tür ist geöffnet. — The door is open. (somebody opened it, and it stands open)
The second is often called the Zustandspassiv — the state passive. In practice it behaves like an adjective, and if you can replace it with "is open" rather than "is being opened", that is what you want.
What to actually memorise
werden plus the participle, and the three jobs werden does. The participles themselves are the ones you already learned for German past tense — there is nothing new to learn there.
Rules stick faster once you have met the words. Every example above links to its own page.
Practise in the trainer