The aim of this paper is to describe selected syntactic phenomena concerning non-finiteness and to show the most frequent types of the non-finite subordinate clauses in the historical German language of the 17th century. The use of the non-finite constructions appears to be especially frequent in Early New High German. Also today, non-finite clauses can be observed. However, their role in the modern discourse is different to that of the diachronic constructions.