As goalkeeper on FSV Frankfurt's women's team, she won the German championship three times and, as a member of the German national team, was runner-up in the World Cup in 1995. On Talking Germany, she describes what it's like to have power and then lose it.
Katja Kraus discovered her passion for soccer when she used to kick a ball against the garage door with the boy from next door. She was so good at blocking his shots that she was soon training on a team. The Offenbach-born player went on to take numerous titles with FSV Frankfurt, a club that promoted women’s football early on. When Katja Kraus ended her career in 1998 she had been goalkeeper for the national team seven times. After university studies and some work experience in sports marketing she became press spokeswoman for the men’s team of Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt. When, at age 33, she became a board member of venerable top flight club Hamburg Sport-Verein Katja Kraus was the highest-placed woman in German professional soccer. She managed the marketing and communication area of the club for eight years until her contract was terminated in 2011. She experienced this setback as a personal defeat which she wrote about in a book “Power – Tales of Success and Failure.” Katja Kraus lives and works in Hamburg.