Actually, this sentence doesn’t look like the past perfect. It’s actually in the simple past tense (or ‘aspect’, as tenses are more fashionably known these days.) ‘Genamedropped’ functions here, I think, as a past participle in a simpe past tense sentence.

German is tricky in this way. ‘Er hat genamedropped’ looks like an English perfect aspect (Present perfect: ‘He has name dropped’; Past perfect: ‘He had name dropped’.)

So, I understand the sentence to simply mean

‘Jeff Jarvis name dropped Schockwellenreiter’ [which is simple past tense],

rather than

‘Jeff Jarvis HAD namedropped Schockwellenreiter’. [Which would be the past perfect.]

Phew. I’m glad I’m sticking to Chinese these days.

Ken Carroll
ChinesePod