A method for determining a rotor frequency and/or a rotor angle of a rotor of a reluctance machine, in particular without an amortisseur, is disclosed. The reluctance machine has a stator with a stator winding and the rotor has a magnetically anisotropic rotor core. The method includes applying a temporal sequence of voltage pulses to the stator winding, determining a sequential pulse response of a current flowing in the stator winding, the current being generated as a result of the voltage pulses and a flux being generated from the voltage pulses as a result of the magnetically anisotropic rotor core, and determining the rotor frequency and/or the rotor angle based on the measured sequential pulse response of the electric current by using an evaluating device.