  A relativistic approach to describe nuclear and in general strongly
interacting matter is introduced and discussed. Here, not only the nuclear
forces but also the masses of the nucleons are generated through meson fields.
Within this framework it is possible to calculate properties of finite nuclei
at a level of accuracy similar to dedicated relativistic nuclear structure
models. Due to the more general approach, a wider range of properties of
hadronic states can be investigated. A number of results for heavy and
neutron-rich nuclei toward the drip line are presented.
