The article examines main images and motifs related to the winter season in German and Austrian lyric poetry at different times. The research material is a wide sample of German-language po-ems on the subject (from the Minnesang era to the 2010s). The article reveals some subgenres preferred by the poets writing about winter: “cry”, “song”, “journey”; demonstrates a persistent importance of the motives of evil, night, death, love, silence in German “winter lyrics” regardless of the age (although the forms expressing them vary signifi-cantly over time); shows that the images of tree and path should be ranked among universal “winter images” (along with those of frost, snow, wind etc.).
German-language poetry; images and motifs of Ger-man lyrics; «Winter» in German lyrics.