Genitive prepositions plus personal pronouns: Does it sound strange?

Question

I'm aware that one says, say, meinetwegen instead of wegen meiner (and wegen mir).

But with other prepositions accepting genitive I cannot judge, because I've never heard nor read

anstelle meiner

or

seiner halber

which is what one would theoretically get by using the construction

Preposition inducing genitive + personal pronoun in genitive 

in the right order.

• Is it bad style?
• Are there irregular forms for the other prepositions, like for wegen?

I guess the easy solution would be just using dative, but I wish to know how a native speaker would write or speak.

Answer 1

Let's start with your last question.

I guess the easy solution would be just using dative, but I wish to know how a native speaker would write/speak.

A native speaker would use dative, at least most of the time. It depends a little on the preposition. E.g you might read sometimes (even more seldomly hear) dank seiner, but even here the more frequently used option (IMHO) would be dank ihm.

It is not so easy to find a general reference for this. On Deutsche Grammatik 2.0 the author writes

Bei Präpositionen, die standardsprachlich mit Genitiv und umgangssprachlich mit Dativ gebraucht werden, steht das Personalpronomen immer im Dativ.

The site, however, seems to be the work of a single author (a teacher for German as a foreign language). So it is not an official reference, and the rule has the additional problem that you need to know which prepositions are used with dative in colloquial speech. At least wegen is among them, for sure.

Then there is something on canoo.net. There you have an exhaustive list of prepositions that are used with genitive, together with usage examples and some general rules. Unfortunately they do not cover the case of pronouns, but from the examples you see that there are other cases, too, where dative is used instead of genitive, and I think these are examples where one would also rather use a dative than a genitive pronoun. Beside, many of these prepositons cannot be used with persons at all, so there is no question about personal pronouns for them.

Then to your next question

Are there irregular forms for the other prepositions, like for wegen?

Yes, there are. You have

• seinethalben
• seinerseits
• (um) seinetwillen

and the corresponding forms with meinet-, deinet-, unsret-, euret- and ihret-.

Finally,

Is it bad style?

Well, to a certain degree style is also a matter of taste and opinion. I would definitely avoid it. It makes the reader or listener stumble at a point where I don't want it. For a second point of view, I recommend reading Wegen: Genitiv oder Dativ? at the blog Belles Lettres. There they strongly argue for using the dative with wegen, and I think some of their arguments could be applied to other prepositions, too. They even say

Präpositionen regieren im Deutschen und im Indogermanischen generell nicht den Genitiv. Man findet ihn nur bei Adverbien, die wie Präpositionen gebraucht werden.

But that would be the start of a new question...

Answer 2

Short answer: It sounds strange and you should usually avoid it.

However, that does not mean that all of these constructions are wrong. For example, Duden lists as synonyms for meinetwegen:

(umgangssprachlich) wegen mir; (landschaftlich, sonst veraltet) wegen meiner

You see that it would be wrong to call “wegen meiner” ungrammatical. If you enjoy using it, you are free to do so. However, there is really no reason to do so, since “meinetwegen” exists.

Instead of “seiner halber” you should use “seinethalben”, because that is just what that expression has developed into. There is no reason to take this word apart.

For “anstelle”, I would argue that “anstelle meiner” can be considered as wrong because of the word order. After all,

anstelle des Kindes

is just

an Stelle des Kindes,

which still makes perfect sense grammatically, as does

an des Kindes Stelle.

With pronouns the word order is more restricted, “meiner Stelle” is correct, “Stelle meiner” nicht, so I would use

an meiner Stelle.

Answer 3

But with other prepositions accepting Genitive I cannot judge, because I've never heard nor read anstelle meiner or seiner halber which is what one would theoretically become by using the construction Preposition inducing genitive + personal pronoun in genitive in the right order.

I as a native speaker would not say seiner halber, I would say seinetwegen.

Seinetwegen / Wegen ihm / Von ihm aus können wir ins Schwimmbad gehen.

Anstelle meiner is not correct.

Meinetwegen / wegen mir / von mir aus können wir ins Schwimmbad gehen.