Verbs that take Genitive Objects

I. Theory

In German, most verbs take either a direct (accusative) object or an indirect (dative) object. There are however, a handful of verbs that take a genitive object. It should be noted that verbs that take genitive objects are considered to be very formal and used only in the written language. Furthermore, the genitive only remains with these verbs in certain expressions (see * examples below).

II. Review of Genitive Declensions

To recap: the genitive is typically used to express possession or ownership. A more detailed overview of the genitive case is discussed in another lesson.

Below, we see a chart of genitive declensions:

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Plural
eines/des Mannes	einer/der Frau	eines/des Buchs	der Leute

III. Verbs

As you can see from the verbs below, many of the translations include the preposition “of” - which often conveys possession in English. Genitive verbs include: sich rühmen, sich enthalten, sich vergewissern, beschuldigen, sich bemächtigen, as well as the verbs used in the examples below: