Anyone who has been in business for three decades can tell many war and crisis stories.

About the dot-com bubble in 2000, for example, when the money of millions of shareholders suddenly disappeared on the Internet.

And about September 11, 2001, when hardly anyone wanted to fly after the terrorist attacks.

About the Lehman crisis in 2008, when the banks no longer trusted each other and almost went bankrupt.

Or about the euro crisis, when the monetary union seemed to be breaking up.

Falk Heunemann

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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But a crisis like this, says Hans-Peter Kratz, he has never experienced before.

"It's a catastrophe," says the 64-year-old taxi operator.

"And it keeps getting worse."

In the past, there was at least one basic business, the trade fairs went on despite everything, the planes kept flying - and always brought enough business travelers into the city who wanted to go to a hotel in the morning and to an establishment in the evening.

But with Corona, trade fairs were cancelled, many hotels have closed, and there is as little going on at the airport as it was in the 1980s.

And instead of large conferences, there are video chats from the home office.

A proud lobbyist

But what will become of the 1100 taxi companies with 1700 vehicles in Frankfurt?

Kratz is not only interested in this for collegial reasons, but also for professional reasons.

Because the Frankfurter leads both the state association of cab operators on a voluntary basis and the taxi association in Frankfurt, which is by far the largest local market, full-time.

"I'm a lobbyist," explains Kratz proudly.

One whose most important task, however, is currently to campaign for longer bridging aids for his industry in politics.

Even before the virus, entrepreneurs were no longer doing as well as they used to.

1,700 taxis in Frankfurt, that's far too many for the city, says Kratz, healthy would be maybe a third fewer.

But the concessions cannot simply be withdrawn.

So at the end of the day too many drivers still have to pounce on the few customers.

There was also competition from outside: For a few years now, the American company Uber and the German joint venture Free Now (Daimler, BMW) have been using apps to arrange trips that are often cheaper than the local taxi tariff.

But there is also competition from the regional transport association RMV, which now also transports its passengers by car with so-called on-demand shuttles called "Hopper" or "Knut".

And then the Federal Transport Minister from Berlin regularly reports with proposals for market liberalization - mostly at the expense of taxis.

"It was paid permanent leave behind the wheel"

Kratz had no idea of ​​any of this when he joined his mother's taxi company more than thirty years ago.

The man from Frankfurt had previously been with the Bundeswehr for twelve years, where he had flown helicopters, studied business administration and learned how to command, organize and assess risks.

With the first Iraq war, he retired from the Bundeswehr and moved behind the wheel.

"It was paid permanent vacation behind the wheel," he says, he could drive around in a fancy Mercedes 123, new interesting people were constantly getting into his car, and when it got quieter, he could read a book or at night with taxi drivers philosophy- and sociology students discussed in the pub until the first plane landed in the morning.

Now he sits in the office and in meeting rooms instead of behind the wheel.

He organizes talks, meetings, sends out statements and the association's own taxi journal, and every now and then he orders his colleagues to a big taxi demonstration through the state capital - and then always gets a kilometer-long, visually stunning tin worm in beige.

Incidentally, the most effective way, he says, is to go to the smoking corner.

It makes no party differences.

He's amazed at the politicians he meets - with whom he can start a conversation over a cigarette.

He can take the time for this because he is no longer dependent on his own taxi income. Kratz is employed as a full-time director at the Frankfurt Taxi Association.

The local association has a remarkable 30 employees, most of whom work at the airport.

There, the association has exclusively rented the parking spaces in front of the terminals, the Hilton Hotel and the Squaire office building, coordinates the many taxis that are rolling in and distributes the flood of passengers arriving there among them.

There is a lack of offspring

For a long time, it was the Uber cars lurking there without permission that Kratz was most concerned about, and he took legal action against the travel agent several times.

"We always won in court."

But it's a cat-and-mouse game, he says, after each verdict Uber has adjusted its rules and claims everything is legal now.

Now he has to worry whether the market will recover at all.

Kratz no longer expects sales like before the crisis.

However, only a few taxi companies went bankrupt, he says.

The vast majority are sole proprietors or only have one or two employees, they would exploit themselves even more in the future - and be able to save less for retirement.

And how long does he want to work as a taxi lobbyist himself?

Well, says the 64-year-old Kratz.

A generation change is currently not easy.

A Frankfurt club board must be a taxi entrepreneur, but the industry lacks young talent - his own son, for example, would rather be a civil engineer.

He is not forced to retire, and there is also no age limit for board members.

And anyway, so far he still enjoys the job a lot.

On the other hand: He would know what he would do as a pensioner.

Sail along the rivers and coasts by boat, for example.

Then he would finally have a permanent vacation behind a wheel.