Flavor Mixing, CP-Violation and the Masses ov 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.