RWTH: Master thesis ensures the inclusion of the drinking hall culture in the Ruhr area on the list of immaterial cultural assets

Marie Enders, then RWTH student at the time, prepared the application as part of her master’s thesis at the Chair of Building Theory and Fundamentals of Design at the Faculty of Architecture. For Enders, now a research assistant at the chair, it was a confrontation with her own homeland, after all she came to Aachen from the Ruhr area to study. “The drinking hall culture in the Ruhr area is an intangible cultural asset for which the architecture of the drinking hall creates the space,” she explains the approach of her work, which was written by professors Anne-Julchen Bernhardt and Carolin Stapenhorst and supervised by Julia von Mende has been.

“Drinking halls with a tried and tested range provide a platform for their regular customers to exchange and integrate, in particular, the urban milieu,” explains Professor Eva-Maria Seng, spokeswoman for the state jury, which, in addition to the drinking halls, also included Steigerland in the list of intangible cultural assets. The applicant was officially awarded by Klaus Kaiser, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry.