The invention is directed to a method for braking an electric drive motor having a stator and a rotor. The stator has field coils which have electrical phase connections for three motor phases. To generate an electromagnetic rotating field driving the rotor, the phase connections are connected to a supply voltage via switches actuated by a control unit which closes the switches depending on the rotary position of the rotor. To brake a rotating rotor, a braking current is generated by short-circuiting the phase connections. A phase short circuit is switched in between each two phase connections of the field coils with a preset temporal sequence to brake the rotor. The phase connections short-circuited are each selected corresponding to the rotary position of the rotor so that that field coil is short circuited in which the voltage induced by the magnetic field of the rotating rotor passes through its maximum.