What QCD sum rules tell about the rho meson — A new answer to an old question

First, a historical overview is presented concerning the use of QCD sum rules to learn about the p-meson properties at finite nuclear densities. Second, it is shown that the combination of the sum rule technique with the large-N _c expansion provides new insight. Especially it is possible to determine from the in-medium sum rules a vacuum(!) quantity which is an important ingredient for hadronic in-medium calculations of the p-meson spectral function. This quantity is the coupling strength of the p-nucleon system to the baryonic resonance N^*(1520).