  The physical excitations entering the effective Lagrangian for quantum black
holes are related to a Goldstone boson which is present in the Rindler limit
and is due to the spontaneous breaking of the translation symmetry of the
underlying Minkowski space. This physical interpretation, which closely
parallels similar well-known results for the effective stringlike description
of flux tubes in QCD, gives a physical insight into the problem of describing
the quantum degrees of freedom of black holes. It also suggests that the
recently suggested concept of 'black hole complementarity' emerges at the
effective Lagrangian level rather than at the fundamental level.
