German/Grammar/Prepositions and Postpositions

German has dative, accusative, genitive and two-way prepositions and postpositions. Each preposition causes the adverbial expression on which it acts to take the case of the preposition. Two-way prepositions cause the adverbial expression to take the accusative case if the verb indicates an action or movement, and the dative case if the verb refers to something that is not changing location.

Notes:

Gegen&uuml;ber is one of the rare postpositions which typically follows the object it modifies.

Er stand mir gegenüber. Mir gegenüber steht Au&szlig;enminister Fischer.

However:

Gegenüber von Ihnen befindet sich das Stadtmuseum.

Nach is also sometimes used as a postposition, when its meaning is "according to". The two phrases are equivalent:

Nach dem Pfarrer sei Gott gut. Dem Pfarrer nach sei Gott gut.

In spoken language, the genitive with prepositions is nowadays often replaced by the dative. But it is important to notice that this replacement is still just colloquial language, e.g.:

Written: W&auml;hrend des Essens wollen wir nicht gest&ouml;rt werden. Spoken: W&auml;hrend dem Essen  wollen wir nicht gest&ouml;rt werden.

Two way Prepositions (Wechselpr&auml;positionen)
The case with two way prepositions should be determined with questions like wo? (where?), wann? (when?), wohin? (where does it go to?) and wie? (how?).

Contractions
Some combinations of articles and prepositions are usually combined:

In all other cases the preposition and articles have to be written separately.

Verbs with prepositions
Several verbs are used with a specific preposition and case: