Flavor mixing, CP-violation and the masses of the light quarks

The observed hierarchy of the quark masses is interpreted as a signal for an underlying ''subnuclear democracy'' as the relevant symmetry of the quark mass terms. A simple breaking of the symmetry leads to a mixing between the second and the third family, in agreement with observation. Introducing the mixing between the first and the second family, one finds an interesting pattern of maximal CP-violation as well as a complete determination of the elements of the CKM matrix and of the unitarity triangle. (orig.)