In the German crafts that require a license, a business needs a master craftsman, a Meister. Section 7b of the Crafts Code opens a second way, known as the Altgesellenregelung, the senior journeyman rule. A journeyman who has passed the journeyman’s exam can receive the right to run such a business. He must have worked in the trade for six years in total, four of them in a leading position. The law defines a leading position as one in which the journeyman was given authority to make decisions on his own responsibility in a business. The experience must also be legal. In 2015 the Federal Administrative Court refused to count years in which a journeyman had run a business without the required registration. Otherwise, the court said, the claim would become an Ersitzungstatbestand for journeymen, a right acquired simply by holding it long enough. In 2020 the administrative court in Koblenz turned down a hairdresser who had led a salon without a master. She knew that the salon was illegal.