Genitive Case

The genitive case indicates possession, and is often shown in German by adding an apostrophe or an ‘s’ to the end of a noun or proper noun.

Das ist Vaters Buch. (S-genitive)  OR

Das ist das Buch meines Vaters. (formal genitive)

In English, however, an apostrophe and/or ‘s’ is needed, for example: Stan’s dog, the cat’s food, Chaz’ car. Often, possession is marked through a dative construction instead:

Das ist das Buch von meinem Vater. (dative)

As with the other three grammatical cases, there are case endings associated with the genitive. Here is a chart with the case endings, which is nearly identical to the definite articles chart:

The definite articles for the genitive are ‘des’ and ‘der,’ and the indefinite articles are ‘eines’ and ‘(k)einer’ (the ‘k’ here is used as a stand-in for the plural form).