German Passive Voice (Passiv): werden-Passive, Zustandspassiv, and When Germans Actually Use It

The passive voice in German is more common — and more grammatically involved — than its English counterpart. English mostly gets away with one passive ("the door is closed"), but German uses two structurally different passives for two different meanings, built from two different auxiliary verbs. Confusing them is a very common intermediate-level mistake, and getting them right is one of the clearer signs of solid B1/B2 grammar.

Forming the werden-passive (Vorgangspassiv)

The standard, action-focused passive is built with a conjugated form of werden + the past participle of the main verb, sent to the end of the clause exactly like any other participle.

Tense	Formula	Example
Present	werden (conjugated) + Partizip II	Das Haus wird* gebaut.* (The house is being built.)
Simple past	wurde + Partizip II	Das Haus wurde* gebaut.* (The house was being built.)
Present perfect	sein + Partizip II + worden	Das Haus ist* gebaut worden.* (The house has been built.)
Future	werden + Partizip II + werden	Das Haus wird* gebaut werden.* (The house will be built.)

Note the special participle worden (not geworden) used only in perfect-tense passive constructions — one of the few places German keeps a fossil form just for this purpose.

Bringing the agent back in with "von" or "durch"

The passive de-emphasizes who did the action — that's its whole point — but you can still name the agent if needed:

von + dative — for a person or active force: Das Haus wird von einer Firma gebaut. (The house is being built by a company.)
durch + accusative — for a means, cause, or instrument: Die Stadt wurde durch ein Erdbeben zerstört. (The city was destroyed by an earthquake.)

In practice, most passive sentences in real German drop the agent entirely — that's usually the reason to use passive in the first place (see below).

Zustandspassiv: the other passive, built with "sein"

This is the mistake zone. Zustandspassiv (state passive) looks similar but describes the resulting state after an action is complete, not the action itself — and it's built with sein, not werden.

	Focus	Example
Vorgangspassiv (werden)	the action happening	Die Tür wird* geschlossen.* (The door is being closed — someone is doing it right now.)
Zustandspassiv (sein)	the resulting state	Die Tür ist* geschlossen.* (The door is closed — describing its current condition, action already finished.)

A useful test: if you could naturally add "gerade" (right now, in progress) and it still makes sense, it's Vorgangspassiv. If you're really just describing how something currently looks or exists — closer in feel to an adjective than a verb — it's Zustandspassiv. Der Laden ist geöffnet. (The shop is open — a state) vs. Der Laden wird um 9 Uhr geöffnet. (The shop is opened/gets opened at 9 — the action of opening it).

When Germans actually prefer passive over active

Passive isn't just a grammar exercise — it does real communicative work, and native speakers reach for it deliberately in specific situations:

The agent is unknown, irrelevant, or obvious from context. Hier wird nicht geraucht. (No smoking here.) Nobody needs to say who enforces it.
Instructions, recipes, and manuals. Das Gemüse wird kleingeschnitten und in die Pfanne gegeben. (The vegetables are cut up and put in the pan.) This is far more common in German written instructions than the English imperative equivalent ("cut the vegetables...").
Formal, scientific, and bureaucratic writing, where passive sounds objective and impersonal — a deliberate stylistic choice, not just possible grammar.
News reporting, to state facts without immediately assigning blame or credit: Der Verdächtige wurde festgenommen. (The suspect was arrested.)

Conversely, everyday spoken German leans active far more than these formal registers — passive is a marker of formality as much as a grammatical tool, so overusing it in casual speech can sound stiff.

The impersonal passive with "es" or no subject at all

German passive can drop the subject entirely when there's no direct object to promote, which has no clean English equivalent: Es wird getanzt. / Hier wird getanzt. (There's dancing going on / people are dancing.) The dummy es disappears the moment another element takes first position in the clause.

Common mistakes

Using sein instead of werden for an ongoing action, or vice versa — this is the single most common error and it changes the meaning, not just the style.
Forgetting worden in the present perfect passive, or wrongly using geworden (which means "became," from the ordinary verb werden, not the passive auxiliary).
Overusing von when durch is more natural for a cause rather than an active agent, and vice versa.

Practice recognizing and forming both passive types in our B1 and B2 courses, and check related grammar topics in our FAQ.