The investigation of the excitation spectrum of nucleons provides important information on many open questions in baryon spectroscopy. The key to any progress is the identification of the effective degrees of freedom leading to a qualitative understanding of strong QCD. The problem ofmissing resonancespredicted by quark models and the nature of the nucleon resonance S11(1535) is discussed on the basis of recent experimental results of the CB‐ELSA experiment at the e−accelerator ELSA in Bonn. Among other things, the data show clear structures due to high‐mass resonance production. Successive decays via &Dgr;(1232)&pgr; are observed. The study of symmetries among negative‐parity baryons allows predictions of &Dgr;*decay properties and, therefore, will shed some light on the rather unknown &Dgr; spectrum. At present, QCD does not account for quark confinement. However, flavor symmetry seems to play a striking role in the confinement of three quarks. This is well observed for the first (u,d) quark family and predictions are also made for the second family (s). Open questions remain as to what the role of the gluon is, for instance. © 2002 American Institute of Physics