Gruppen

Gruppen is the plural form of the German noun Gruppe, meaning "groups" or "collections of individuals or things." In everyday language it is used to refer to any aggregation of people, animals, objects, or ideas that share a common characteristic or purpose, such as work groups, student groups, or social groups.

In mathematics, Gruppe is the term for a group, a fundamental algebraic structure consisting of a set equipped with a single binary operation that combines any two elements to form a third element, satisfying closure, associativity, the existence of an identity element, and inverses. The plural form Gruppen is used when referring to multiple mathematical groups, and the field is commonly described as group theory (Gruppen-Theorie) in German.

In sociology and social psychology, Gruppen denotes social groups, recurring patterns of interaction among people who share goals, norms, or identity. The concept distinguishes between primary groups (close, personal relationships) and secondary groups (larger, task-focused collectives), and is central to studies of group dynamics, conformity, leadership, and organization.

Other uses include organizational contexts (study groups, project groups), military or civic units, and classification contexts where "group" denotes a set of items. The term is ubiquitous in German-language discourse and cross-disciplinary analyses that involve collective units.