It looks like somehow the definition text of <refState> ended up in <state> in the translated versions of the Guidelines.
English: <state> contains a description of some status or quality attributed to a person, place, or organization often at some specific time or for a specific date range.
German: <state> beschreibt einen Bestandteil einer Standardreferenz mittels der Milestone-Methode.
cf.:
English: <refState> (reference state) specifies one component of a canonical reference defined by the milestone method.
German: <refState> (reference state) specifies one component of a canonical reference defined by the milestone method.
This is clearly the result of a careless cut and paste: the translations of the <desc> for <refState> in Spanish and Portuguese have also been moved to <state> along with the German. Need to do some digging to see whether we ever had a German translation for the <state> description.