[en] The measurement of the top quark mass is an important task at the future International Linear Collider. The most promising process is the top quark pair production in the threshold region. In this region the top quarks behave non-relativistically and a perturbative treatment using effective field theories is possible. Current second order theoretical predictions in a fixed order approach show an uncertainty which is bigger than the expected experimental errors. Therefore, an improvement of the cross section calculation is desirable. There are two ways to incorporate higher order effects, one is to calculate the full next order in the fixed order approach, another possibility is to resum large logarithms. In this work, the fixed order calculation has been extended to the third order in perturbation theory for the QCD corrections. The result is a strongly improved scale behavior and a better understanding of heavy quarkonium systems. The Green function result is given in a semi-analytic form. The energy levels and wave functions for heavy quarkonium states have been calculated from the poles of the Green function and are presented for arbitrary quantum number n. The results have been implemented in a Mathematica program which makes the data easily accessible. Once some missing matching coefficients are calculated, and a complete electroweak calculation is available, the results of this work can be used to improve the precision of the top quark mass measurement to an uncertainty of less than 50 MeV. An inclusion of initial state radiation and beam effects are essential for a realistic observable. In the future, the results obtained could be used for a third order resummation of large logarithms. Further applications are also the extraction of the bottom quark mass with sum rules. (orig.)