Abstract: A field bus system (16), especially a LIN bus system, has a master (14) and at least one bus subscriber (15). In order to carry out an automatic configuration of the bus system, the master (14) stores the current configuration of the field bus system (16) as the known configuration, and carries out the following steps after restarting the bus system: a standard address is allocated as a subscriber address to the at least one bus subscriber (15); it is checked whether the at least one bus subscriber (15) belongs to the known configuration and, if this is the case, a unique subscriber address is allocated thereto (15); it is then checked whether the at least one bus subscriber (15) still has the standard address and, if this is the case, the at least one bus subscriber is identified and a unique subscriber address is allocated thereto.