Why is "festen Schrittes" used instead of "mit festen Schritten"?

Question

This is the sentence from "Die Verwandlung".

Aber dann ging natürlich wie immer das Dienstmädchen （festen Schrittes） zur Tür und öffnete.

Are the words in the bracket genitive or dative, plural or single? Why does the sentence use "festen Schrittes" instead of "mit festen Schritten" ？

Related: https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/2039/a-phrase-list-for-the-curious-case-of-the-genitivus-absolutus, https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/1990/senkenden-hauptes-schlief-sie-langsam-ein-is-this-grammatically-correct — chirlu, Dec 12 '15 at 14:46
It is genitive and singular. Mit festem Schritt wouldn’t be impossible either, although festen Schrittes is a common collocation. — chirlu, Dec 12 '15 at 14:48
Also related: http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/7207/der-dativ-ist-dem-genitiv-sein-tod-is-german-really-losing-genitiv-evolutio — Takkat, Dec 12 '15 at 16:29
This basically deals with the same grammatical structure hence why I am labelling it as a duplicate. — Jan, Dec 12 '15 at 19:20
Es gibt einige gängige Adverbien in Form eines Genitivs. Der übliche Begriff dafür ist "adverbialer Genitiv". Solche Formeln sind eher literarisch. Ich habe auch keine Idee, wie man solche Genitive herleitet. - http://gymbasis.ch/moodle/Deutsch/Grammatik/SG-Funktion/adverbialien.html — rogermue, Dec 13 '15 at 15:04

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 17 '20 at 08:52

I am not sure if "why" is a good question. Anyway, there are many phrases using the genetive singular in a similar manner:

leichten/schweren/klopfenden Herzens

guten Mutes

allen Ernstes

I daresay they all describe the "mode" of doing something.

For me as a very oldfashioned native speaker it is absolutely natural to somewhat freely form phrases of this kind:

Zornigen Blickes nahm er seinen Hut und verliess das Zimmer.

But the number of combinations that sound native is very limited. I would never say:

Schweren Armes hob er sein Schwert.

It would be good to know if this ever was standard practise. I tend to assume that.

1 Answers1