This book summarizes the lectures given at the 162. WE-Heraeus Seminar which took place in the house of the German Physical Society in Bad Honnefin August 1996. Already the number 162 shows the activity and effectiveness of the WE-Heraeus Foundation. We would like to express our thanks to Jutta Adam and Dr. Volker Schafer for the almost incredibly simple and unbureaucratical procedure of funding, organization and realization, and, of course, to the founders. Similar to the 152. WE-Heraeus Seminar Relativity and Scientific Computing (Springer Verlag 1996), this seminar was a joint venture of the Astronomical Society (AG) and of the Section 'Gravitation und Relativity Theory' of the German Physical Society (DPG). Since Einstein has developed his Theory of General Relativity more than 80 years ago, the situation has changed dramatically. In the first decades main efforts were untertaken for a better understanding and for the experimental verification of the theory. Mean­ while General Relativity (GR) is one of the experimentally best confirmed theories with 13 an accuracy better than 10- ! Consequently, GR has become a powerful tool for the investigation of cosmic processes where strong gravitational fields are involved. The state of the art of our knowledge is summarized by Jiirgen Ehlers in the first chapter. An impressive example of the change of the situation is the gravitational light deflection.

Hans-Peter Nollert (Penn State University, USA), Harald Riffert (U Tübingen), Hanns Ruder (U Tübingen) und Friedrich W. Hehl (U Köln) forschen alle auf den verschiedenen Teilgebieten der Astrophysik.
Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder ist außerdem Leiter der entsprechenden Fachgruppe der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (DPG).