Welcome! In this deck, we'll master two important German past tenses. First, the Präteritum, or simple past, which is mainly used for storytelling in written German, like in novels and news reports. Then, we'll learn the Plusquamperfekt, or past perfect, which is used to describe an event that happened before another past event. Let's begin.

Let's start with the Präteritum tense. While the Perfekt tense is common in spoken German, the Präteritum is the tense of choice for written narratives. You'll see it everywhere in books and articles. The two most important verbs to learn in this tense are 'sein', to be, and 'haben', to have. We'll start with 'sein'.