German prepositions and the cases they take

Every German preposition forces a case onto the noun that follows it, and unlike English — where "with," "for," and "under" don't touch the words around them at all — that choice is not optional or stylistic. Get the case wrong and the sentence is simply wrong, even if every word in it is spelled correctly. The good news is that most prepositions are fixed to one case permanently; you don't have to work anything out in the moment, you just have to know which group a given preposition belongs to.

The always-accusative group

These prepositions take accusative every time, regardless of what the sentence is doing:

A common mnemonic groups the core five — durch, ohne, gegen, für, um — into the acronym DOGFU or the phrase "durch, für, gegen, ohne, um" said as a fixed chant, precisely because there's no semantic thread tying them together the way there sometimes is with the dative group below. Entlang is the odd one out structurally: it usually follows its noun rather than preceding it (die Straße entlang, "along the street"), but it still governs accusative.

A few sentences make the group concrete: Ich gehe durch den Park (I'm walking through the park). Das Geschenk ist für dich (the gift is for you). Wir haben nichts gegen ihn (we have nothing against him). Sie kam ohne ihren Bruder (she came without her brother). None of these prepositions cares whether the sentence involves motion, a static fact, or an abstract relationship — the case is fixed to the word itself, not to what the sentence is doing, which is exactly what sets this group apart from the switching prepositions covered further down.

The always-dative group

Gegenüber is unusual among this set in that, like entlang, it often follows the noun it governs (dem Bahnhof gegenüber, "across from the station") rather than sitting in front of it, though placing it first is also correct.

This group is worth a few worked examples too, since dative endings are less immediately visible than accusative ones: Ich komme aus der Schweiz (I come from Switzerland). Wir wohnen bei meinen Eltern (we live at my parents' place). Sie fährt mit dem Zug (she's travelling by train). Seit dem Sommer arbeite ich hier (I've worked here since summer). As with the accusative group, none of these sentences' meanings hinge on motion versus stillness — mit dem Zug is dative whether the train is moving or parked, because mit is fixed to dative regardless of context.

The genitive group, honestly described

A smaller set of prepositions is taught as governing genitive:

This is the group where a textbook rule and everyday usage part ways, and it's worth knowing that rather than being caught off guard by it later. In written and formal German, all six take genitive: wegen des Wetters (because of the weather). In spoken and casual German, wegen, trotz, and statt are extremely often heard with dative instead — wegen dem Wetter is common in conversation and, in many regions, barely registers as nonstandard. Während, innerhalb, and außerhalb stay closer to genitive across registers. The practical takeaway: use genitive by default, especially in writing, but don't be thrown when you hear a native speaker use dative with wegen, trotz, or statt — that's real, widespread usage, not a mistake you're mishearing.

The prepositions that switch: an, auf, in, and the rest

Nine prepositions — an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, zwischen — don't belong to any of the three groups above, because they take either accusative or dative depending on whether the sentence describes movement toward a new location or a static state. That distinction, and the wo/wohin test that resolves it, is substantial enough to deserve its own explanation rather than a compressed summary here — see the wo versus wohin guide for the full mechanism and worked examples.

Common contractions

Several prepositions routinely fuse with the definite article that follows them, especially in speech, and the contracted forms are common enough in writing that they're worth recognising on sight rather than mentally expanding every time:

These aren't optional stylistic contractions the way "don't" is in English — im Haus is the normal, expected form, and in dem Haus reads as unusually formal or emphatic in most contexts. Learning the contracted forms alongside the prepositions they come from will save you from stumbling on very ordinary sentences.

Memorisation advice that actually holds up

The single most useful habit is to stop learning a preposition as an isolated word and start learning it as a preposition-plus-case unit from the first time you meet it — "mit + dative," not just "mit." Treat the case as part of the word's spelling, not a separate fact to derive afterward. This matters more for German than it might seem worth, because the case is exactly the piece of information that doesn't show up in a bilingual glossary entry for the preposition alone.

The second habit, and the one that pays off longest, is learning verbs together with the preposition — and case — they take, as a fixed phrase rather than a verb plus a freely chosen preposition. Warten auf (to wait for) takes accusative: Ich warte auf den Bus. Denken an (to think about) also takes accusative: Ich denke an dich. Sich interessieren für (to be interested in) takes accusative too: Ich interessiere mich für Musik. These verb-preposition pairings, often called Präpositionalverben, don't follow from the preposition's usual meaning or case group in any predictable way — auf is often dative in its spatial sense, but warten auf is accusative regardless, because the whole phrase is really one lexical unit. Learning warten auf + accusative as a single chunk, the way you'd learn an idiom, is far more reliable than trying to reason your way to the case from the preposition's other uses.

For the broader case system these prepositions plug into — what nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive actually mark, and how to recognise which one a sentence needs — see the guide to German cases.

How WunderDict helps

When you look a word up in WunderDict, a preposition's case, or a verb's governing preposition and case, comes back as part of the entry rather than something you have to look up separately. Saving these into a list keeps the preposition-plus-case unit intact exactly the way the advice above recommends learning it.

WunderDict's Preposition Match mode drills fixed-case prepositions directly, and Case Picker covers the two-way group alongside general case selection. Both need a free account; guest mode covers search and list-building, not scored practice. See the other guides for more on German grammar.