The passive in the past and with modals: wurde gebaut, muss gemacht werden
CEFR B2 · part 1
edumaterial's parts within the level. The European framework does not subdivide them.
Die Tür wird geöffnet or ist geöffnet: the action and the stateTelling apart two sentences that look alike and mean different things. Die Tür wird…Er sagte, er sei krank: the Konjunktiv I of the newspapersReporting what somebody else said without making it yours. German has a verb form just…Er muss krank sein: when the modal is not an order but a guessThe modals' second job, the one the dictionary does not mention. Er muss krank sein is…Der gestern von uns gekaufte Tisch: a whole clause wedged inside the articleReading —and taking apart— the construction that makes German technical prose look…dennoch, folglich, hingegen: the connectors of written GermanThe connectors that make a text read as if an adult wrote it: dennoch for concession…bestehen aus, auf or in: when the preposition changes the meaningThe advanced tier of prepositional verbs: the ones with SEVERAL prepositions that mean…The rule, in three lines
The passive in the tenses that were missing, and only the auxiliary changes. Präteritum: Das Haus wurde gebaut. In the Perfekt the odd word turns up, worden with no ge: Das Haus ist gebaut worden. And with a modal, the whole passive infinitive at the end: Das muss heute gemacht werden.
The usual slip. Writing geworden in the passive Perfekt. geworden exists, but it is the participle of werden meaning to become: Er ist Arzt geworden. In the passive you say worden, no ge, and it is the only word in German that behaves this way. Second slip: using haben instead of sein, because the passive Perfekt always takes sein.
Why it catches you out. English builds it all with «be» —was built, has been built, must be done— so the meaning costs you nothing. The trap is the mapping: German uses werden for the passive and sein for the state, and translating «be» as sein lands you on the wrong one every time.