WITZ-ZUFALL: Serendipity as Autopoietic Operation — Why Luck Is Not Random and How Intentional Structural Coupling Generates Fortunate Coincidence

This paper introduces WITZ-ZUFALL as a formal neologism: the class of fortunate coincidences that arise as emergent outcomes of intentional autopoietic action rather than random events. WITZ (wit, intelligence, creative leap) + ZUFALL (coincidence, chance, falling-together) formally names what the passive observer calls luck and the active participant experiences as the world meeting them halfway. The paper demonstrates that serendipity is not stochastic but structurally generated — an attractor state produced by committed action and authentic perturbability. Dedicated to Vera F. Birkenbihl on her 80th birthday.