Jacques musste seinen Eltern früher viel helfen.
Inge durfte früher erst nach der Hausarbeit spielen.

Simple past

The simple past is the verb tense used to express something that happened in the past. For the most part, it is used in written language, for example, in newspapers or books. The simple past of the auxiliary verbs sein, and haben and that of the modal verbs, for example, müssen and dürfen are also used in spoken German.


Simple past with the modal verbs: müssen, dürfen

The simple past of modal verbs is made by adding -te- to the root verb, followed by the ending that corresponds to the person performing the action. Modal verbs do not take an umlaut in the simple past. The simple past forms of the modal verbs müssen and dürfen are listed below:

müssen (simple past):

dürfen (simple past):