  In this habilitation theses the chiral SU(3) Lagrangian is applied to
antikaon and hyperon propagation in cold nuclear matter. The self consistent
many-body dynamics relies on a detailed analysis of the pion, kaon and
antikaon-nucleon scattering data with particular emphasis on constraints set by
unitarity, covariance, causality and crossing symmetry. The work is based in
large parts on collaborations with E.E. Kolomeitsev and C.L. Korpa and part of
the results are published already. Unpublished results concern a discussion of
the nature of baryon resonances in the context of coupled channel dynamics and
a discussion of antikaon production in heavy-ion collisions at subthreshold
energies. A new mechanism which drives the system towards equilibrium
conditions is proposed. The theses contains also new results on the properties
of antikaons and hyperon resonances in asymmetric nuclear matter.
