Generalized symmetric planes

In this paper we relate the theory of stable planes to the theory of generalized symmetric spaces in the sense of differential geometry where the symmetries may be of arbitrary order. This leads to the notion of a generalized symmetric plane. We assign to every generalized symmetric plane an associated infinitesimal model and show that the associated infinitesimal model essentially determines a generalized symmetric plane up to global isomorphism. In particular, every generalized symmetric plane with an abelian group of transvections is a topological translation plane.