As far as the atmosphere at his workplace is concerned, Benedikt Stuchtey is used to sorrow.

The history professor has his office on the third floor of Tower C of the "Phil-Fak", right next to the Marburg city motorway.

"I look the truck drivers straight in the face," he says.

The noise and exhaust fumes are unpleasant enough, but he's more worried about the poor condition of the building.

The towers of the Philipps University are more than 50 years old and, according to Stuchtey, "extremely dilapidated".

A colleague told him that a panel once fell from the ceiling of a seminar room.

Luckily nobody was injured.

Sasha Zoske

Sheet maker in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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But now Stuchtey is happy if he can still enter his office at all.

He is currently only allowed to do this for 90 minutes a day, and only after registering with the caretaker.

The reason: Towers A, B, C and D on Wilhelm-Röpke-Strasse do not meet fire protection regulations in their current condition.

As the university announced, a test in Building A showed that a side stairwell as a second escape route could be blocked by smoke.

Since the towers are identical, this could affect any of them in an emergency.

Therefore, the university management has decided to close all four buildings from the second floor until further notice.

This is extremely annoying for Stuchtey and his employees: It's not just about access to computers, important files are also stored in the offices, says the historian.

800 places affected

University Vice President Evelyn Korn tries not to make the situation appear too dramatic - even if the numbers already show that the problem is no small one.

About 800 seminar room and lecture hall seats are affected by the closure, Korn writes;

that is about half of the classroom capacity available in the buildings.

"The failures can be easily compensated for." There are still "more than enough" workstations for students both in the towers themselves and in the university library.

According to Korn, there are also jobs for around 350 university employees in the blocked parts of the building.

The majority of them can also do their work on the go.

Because an institute recently moved out, around 40 offices, some with several workstations, are empty on the common ground floor of the towers.

"This ensures that work that has to be done in person can be done in person."

Teaching in presence

As Korn further reports, work to improve fire protection has already begun.

The plan is to have completed the conversions, which will probably cost more than half a million euros, “by the start of the lecture period in October”.

"The coming semester will therefore continue to be planned in attendance." History professor Stuchtey does not sound quite so optimistic, also in view of the current difficulties in getting craftsmen and building materials.

The teachers were told that the work could stretch into the lecture period for one to three weeks, he says.

He is therefore prepared to offer his events digitally if necessary.