Meaning of the abbrevation “o.g.” and position in context?

Question

I am reading a document for renting an apartment in Germany through a real-estate company, and I stumbled upon the abbreviation, o.g. What does it mean, and what are the original words?

The context is as following:

Honorarbestätigung Mietinteressenten

Interessent: Herr norio

Makler: MMM GMBH

Mietobject:

Xstraße z in xx Dresden, 1-Zi.-Wohnung im 1.Obergeschoss, WE x.xx

Der Mietinteressent bestätigt, o.g. ihm unbekannte vermietbare Wohnung vom Makler nachgewiesen sowie komplette Daten erhalten zu haben.

…

I guess it means abovementioned, and I expect that the sentence should mean something like

The prospective tenant certifies that he has been shown the abovementioned rentable apartment by the broker and has received complete data.

However, for this to be the case, I would expect that o.g. comes at a different position in the sentence, namely before unbekannte.

I am also not sure if “Der Mietinteressent bestätigt, … ihm … Wohnung … nachgewiesen … zu haben.” may be translated as “The prospective tenant certifies to have been shown the apartment”. I think it would mean that “The prospective tenant certifies to have shown the apartment.” Could you explain the structure of the sentence as well?

Answer 1

You are right about the meaning of o. g.: It stands for obengenannte (or any inflected form) which translates as abovementioned. So the relevant segment of in your is:

obengenannte ihm unbekannte vermietbare Wohnung.

This is the noun Wohnung (appartment) which is described by three adjectives:

• obengenannte (abovementioned)
• ihm unbekannte (unknown to him)
• vermietbare (rentable)

The word order is correct, as placing o. g. between ihm and unbekannte would not make sense.

Two things might have confused you:

• You may have thought that ihm belongs to nachgewiesen instead of unbekannte. This is not far fetched, as a very similar sentence structure would be used, if it were you who has proven¹ something to somebody, e.g.:

  Ich bestätige, ihm meine Aufenthaltsberechtigung nachgewiesen zu haben. – I confirm that I have proven him my right of residence to him.

  (where ihm/him is somebody else).

• The adjectives have the same rank (as you could place an und between them) and therefore should be separated by a comma, which would have clarified the whole structure:

  obengenannte, ihm unbekannte, vermietbare Wohnung

  You would only drop the commas if there were a lot of apartments to which one or two of the adjectives apply and you want to specifically refer to the only one to which all three apply (which is not the case here).

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^{¹ Note that I translate jmd. etw. nachweisen as to prove sth. to sb. here for simplicity. The actual meaning of nachweisen in this context cannot be easily translated into one English word (and does not matter for this aspect).}

Answer 2

You’re right, “o.g.” means “obengenannte”, i.e. “abovementioned”. Full translation is

The prospective tenant certifies that the abovementioned, previously unknown to him, rentable apartment, was pointed out to him by the broker, and that he has received complete data.

“o.g.” is in the correct spot, as it refers to the entire phrase “ihm unbekannte vermietbare Wohnung”. I could not name a concrete rule (things are similarly tricky in English), but the order of adjectival phrases here is one that intuitively looks like the correct one to native speakers.

“nachgewiesen” is indeed a passive construction, due to the preposition “vom”.