<p>For concrete dams the temperature is, beside water pressure, death load and earthquakes, one of the major loads. Therefore, temperature impacts have to be considered when conducting the required stress analysis. For a feasible implementation the „reference temperature“ at which the concrete is free of thermal stresses is required. But for concrete dams this is mostly unknown. Therefor the temperature, stiffness and stress distribution over the complete building process of a representative German concrete dam was modelled via a FE-Model to analyse the reference temperature. The effect of the major influence parameters cement ratio, fresh concrete temperature and climatic influence during construction were quantified. Using elastic material laws, the results show an isotropic reference temperature and reveal five different zones, in which almost similar reference temperatures exist. Using visco-elastic material laws, the reference temperature is anisotropic and decreases over time as a consequence of the relaxation progress and the transitions between the five zones become more blurred. Based on these results, an equation for the determination of a representative reference temperature for the five different sections in the concrete dam was developed. This enables an efficient calculation of temperature induced stresses. </p>