diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 99b437f..88a6648 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 ## Bug Fixes
+- fixed umlaut queries on windows
 - fixed retrieval of access token when multiple access tokens are stored
 
 # RKorAPClient 0.6.1
diff --git a/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R b/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R
index 8d9545a..8c4ad47 100644
--- a/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R
+++ b/R/KorAPCorpusStats.R
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
     url <-
       paste0(kco@apiUrl,
              'statistics?cq=',
-             URLencode(vc, reserved = TRUE))
+             URLencode(enc2utf8(vc), reserved = TRUE))
     log.info(verbose, "Getting size of virtual corpus \"", vc, "\"", sep = "")
     res <- apiCall(kco, url)
     log.info(verbose, ": ", res$tokens, " tokens\n")
diff --git a/R/KorAPQuery.R b/R/KorAPQuery.R
index 230eb24..0b07106 100644
--- a/R/KorAPQuery.R
+++ b/R/KorAPQuery.R
@@ -168,8 +168,8 @@
       }
       request <-
         paste0('?q=',
-               URLencode(query, reserved = TRUE),
-               if (vc != '') paste0('&cq=', URLencode(vc, reserved = TRUE)) else '', '&ql=', ql)
+               URLencode(enc2utf8(query), reserved = TRUE),
+               if (vc != '') paste0('&cq=', URLencode(enc2utf8(vc), reserved = TRUE)) else '', '&ql=', ql)
       webUIRequestUrl <- paste0(kco@KorAPUrl, request)
       requestUrl <- paste0(
         kco@apiUrl,
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-corpusQuery.R b/tests/testthat/test-corpusQuery.R
index 72b9f36..df512cd 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-corpusQuery.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-corpusQuery.R
@@ -30,6 +30,28 @@
   expect_gt(q@totalResults, 0)
 })
 
+test_that("corpusQuery can handle latin1 encoded umlauts in query and vc", {
+  query <- "Ameisenb\xe4r"
+  Encoding(query)="latin1"
+  vc <- "pubPlace=N\xfcrnberg"
+  Encoding(vc)="latin1"
+
+  q <- new("KorAPConnection") %>%
+    corpusQuery(query, vc=vc)
+  expect_gt(q@totalResults, 0)
+})
+
+test_that("corpusQuery can handle utf8 encoded umlauts in query and vc", {
+  query <- "Ameisenb\xc3\xa4r"
+  Encoding(query)="UTF-8"
+  vc <- "pubPlace=N\xc3\xbcrnberg"
+  Encoding(vc)="UTF-8"
+
+  q <- new("KorAPConnection") %>%
+    corpusQuery(query, vc=vc)
+  expect_gt(q@totalResults, 0)
+})
+
 test_that("fetchAll fetches all results", {
   q <- new("KorAPConnection", verbose = TRUE) %>%
     corpusQuery("Ameisenplage", vc = "pubDate since 2014")