You can only play it here with JavaScript switched on. To read through, though, every question is below with its answer and sources — and there is a printable set.
Round 1 · The state of play
How bad is it really?
1. In 2002 there were around 46,500 pubs in Germany. How many are there today? (also in the short round)
Answer: around 21,000
More than half of all pubs have disappeared since the turn of the millennium — the VAT statistics record around 21,000 licensed drinking establishments for 2022. This is no longer a gradual shift, it is a structural break. It rarely makes headlines, because each individual closure looks small.
Worth keeping: Since 2002: more than half of all pubs gone.
Source:
Destatis VAT statistics, time series (German) — One series, one source: VAT statistics from Destatis, the federal statistics office, category WZ 56.3 (German).
2. How many pubs does Germany lose on average — net, meaning after all new openings are subtracted? (also in the short round)
- a) one a week
- b) one a day
- c) three a day
- d) ten a day
Answer: three a day
Calculated from the Destatis time series: around 25,500 fewer businesses in twenty years, so about 1,300 a year, or a good three a day. That is a net figure — new openings are already subtracted, so more than that actually close. In the time it takes to play this quiz, another piece of a village centre has gone.
Worth keeping: Three pubs a day.
Source:
Destatis VAT statistics, time series (German) — Our own calculation from the Destatis time series (46,500 in 2002 down to around 21,000 in 2022).
3. Berlin once had around 20,000 corner and neighbourhood pubs. How many are left today?
Answer: around 500
In the very city that counts as Germany's pub capital, the classic corner pub has all but disappeared — pushed out by rents, bars and cafés. What is left is being rediscovered by a young generation.
Worth keeping: Berlin: around 500 of 20,000 corner pubs are left.
Source:
DEHOGA Berlin, via Tageskarte (German)
4. In Saxony-Anhalt there are municipalities without a single pub or restaurant left.
Answer: True — 18 municipalities
Between 2010 and 2024, 841 hospitality businesses closed there; in small towns one in three disappeared. No pub means no room for the fire brigade party, the card night, the funeral reception. The village then literally has no living room left.
Worth keeping: 18 municipalities in Saxony-Anhalt: not a single pub left.
Source:
Saxony-Anhalt parliamentary question (German)
5. How is drinks-led hospitality — the classic pub — doing economically today compared with 2019 (in real terms, so after price rises are stripped out)?
- a) about the same
- b) around 10% below
- c) around 25% below
- d) around 40% below
Answer: around 40% below — precisely 39.7% down
The pub is by far the weakest segment of the entire hospitality sector; the industry as a whole is 14.8% down. Covid was the accelerant, not the cause. The cause runs deeper: costs, changing consumption and a night out that has moved into the living room and onto the phone.
Worth keeping: The pub is hospitality's weakest link: 40% down in real terms since 2019.
Source:
DEHOGA figures Q4/2025 (PDF, German)
Round 2 · The economics
Why does nothing add up?
6. A beer costs €3.00 in a village pub. How much of that is left for the pub as profit? (also in the short round)
Answer: around 2 cents
First, 48 cents go on VAT — 19%, because the reduced rate does not apply to drinks. Very little of the rest survives: industry figures put the margin in drinks-led hospitality at between minus 2 and plus 3 cents per euro of turnover, which on a €3 beer comes to a few cents — or a loss. That is why every single regulars' table decides whether a pub lives or dies.
Worth keeping: A €3 beer leaves the pub around 2 cents.
Sources:
DEHOGA figures Q4/2025 (PDF, German) · Gastroinsider, industry benchmarks (German) — The documented figure is the margin per euro of turnover (minus 2 to plus 3 cents). The 48 cents of VAT and the conversion to a €3 beer are our own calculation.
7. Of every euro of turnover — what is a pub's biggest cost?
- a) buying in the drinks
- b) staff
- c) rent
- d) energy
Answer: staff — around 40 cents of every euro
Buying in the drinks comes just behind at 28 to 32 cents; rent and energy follow well back. No other part of the hospitality trade earns as little turnover per worker as the pub. Many village pubs only survive because the landlady leaves her own wage out of the sums — that is not a strategy, that is the stage before closure.
Worth keeping: The biggest cost is the person behind the bar — and often they go unpaid.
Sources:
DEHOGA figures Q4/2025 (PDF, German) · Federal agriculture ministry, hospitality statistics (German)
8. The big VAT cut for hospitality (7% instead of 19%) helps pubs most of all. (also in the short round)
Answer: False
The 7% rate has applied permanently since 2026 — but only to food. Drinks stay at 19%, so the drinks-led pub gains almost nothing from the biggest tax relief hospitality has seen in years. A side effect that was easy to foresee: a pub that puts on a lunch menu has the tax system behind it.
Worth keeping: 7% only applies to the schnitzel — the beer still pays 19%.
Source:
Tax Amendment Act 2025 (German)
9. In 2013 every person in Germany drank an average of 106 litres of beer a year. How much was it in 2023?
Answer: 88 litres
The decline is not a pub trend but a social one — and it is an opportunity: landladies report that alcohol-free orders are rising, especially among young guests. The pub of the future runs on company, not on alcohol.
Worth keeping: It's about company, not alcohol — alcohol-free brings in new guests.
Source:
watson.de feature (Osnabrück University, German)
10. Electronic dartboard, pinball machine, pool table, jukebox: what does this kit usually cost a pub?
- a) the full price of a new machine
- b) a monthly rental
- c) nothing — the operator supplies them free and shares the takings
- d) that doesn't exist any more
Answer: nothing — the operator supplies them free
The operator model is as old as the jukebox: the machine operator brings the equipment, services it and splits the takings with the landlord. No investment, a steady extra income. And it is darts, table football and pinball of all things that are pulling young people back into the pub.
Worth keeping: The dartboard costs the pub nothing — and brings in the young.
Sources:
Hotelier.de on gaming machine contracts (German) · watson.de feature (Osnabrück University, German)
Round 3 · The human side
What does the pub do to us?
11. People without a local pub have 6.0 close friends on average. How many do people with a local pub have? (also in the short round)
Answer: 7.2
More than one friend's difference — measured by the Oxford research group around Robin Dunbar. People with a local pub also trust others more and are more satisfied with their lives. In small neighbourhood pubs, conversations are demonstrably longer and more personal than in large venues.
Worth keeping: A local pub: one more close friend on average.
Sources:
Dunbar et al. 2017 (peer-reviewed) · Dunbar, “Friends on Tap” (CAMRA) — Listed first is the peer-reviewed 2017 version; the original study was a commissioned report for the pub organisation CAMRA.
12. Which age group in Germany most often feels severely lonely? (also in the short round)
- a) people over 75
- b) people aged 55 to 65
- c) young adults
- d) all of them about equally
Answer: young adults — 14.1%
The figure comes from the 2024 Einsamkeitsbarometer, the federal loneliness report, using data from 2021. Loneliness is not an old people's issue — and that is exactly what explains one of the most surprising trends of the moment: the generation that grew up with the smartphone is rediscovering the pub. A dartboard instead of a screen, a real round instead of a group chat.
Worth keeping: The loneliest are the young — and they are rediscovering the pub right now.
Source:
Loneliness Barometer 2024, federal family ministry (PDF, German)
13. People in eastern Germany feel lonelier than people in the west. (also in the short round)
Answer: False
The data show no east-west difference in loneliness; the biggest risk factor is a low income. What is disappearing disproportionately in the east are the places: in the Uckermark district, half of all licensed drinking establishments closed between 2010 and 2023. The problem is not how people feel — it is the infrastructure for meeting each other.
Worth keeping: The east is not lonelier — it is missing the places.
Sources:
DIW Weekly Report 5/2025 (German) · Tagesspiegel on the Uckermark (German)
14. Being socially well connected affects life expectancy about as much as …
- a) an apple a day
- b) a gym membership
- c) giving up smoking
- d) not measurable at all
Answer: giving up smoking
An analysis of 148 studies shows that people with strong social relationships have a roughly 50% higher likelihood of survival — an effect as large as that of giving up smoking. Keeping up friendships is preventive health care. So are the places where friendships form along the way.
Worth keeping: Community works like giving up smoking — it just tastes better.
Source:
Holt-Lunstad et al. 2010, PLOS Medicine
15. Chicago, heatwave of 1995, more than 700 dead. Two almost identical, equally poor neighbourhoods had completely different death rates. What made the difference?
- a) more money
- b) more hospitals
- c) more air conditioning
- d) busy streets, shops and meeting places
Answer: busy streets, shops and meeting places
The finding comes from Eric Klinenberg's study of the heatwave, “Heat Wave” (2002): the neighbourhood with intact everyday places was among the safest in the whole city, because people who know each other by sight look out for one another. Klinenberg coined the term “social infrastructure” later, in “Palaces for the People” (2018) — meaning places as vital to survival as the power and water networks. The pub is one of them.
Worth keeping: Places where people know each other save lives when it matters.
Source:
Klinenberg, “Heat Wave” / “Palaces for the People” — Two works, one source: the Chicago finding from “Heat Wave” (2002), the term from “Palaces for the People” (2018).
Round 4 · The comeback
What actually helps?
16. North Rhine-Westphalia funds “third places” — venues for culture and getting together in rural areas — with up to €450,000 over three years. What happened when the funding ran out?
- a) Most of the places supported themselves
- b) The state had to add follow-up funding
- c) The municipalities took over
- d) The programme was discontinued
Answer: The state had to add follow-up funding
Even places funded this generously did not support themselves after three years — the state added stabilisation funding: €120,000 over three more years, less from year to year. The question “What does the place live on afterwards?” has to be answered from day one.
Worth keeping: After the funding comes the question: what does the place live on then?
Source:
North Rhine-Westphalia culture ministry (German)
17. In Britain, villages buy their pubs together — everyone holds a share. What percentage of these community-owned pubs survive? (also in the short round)
Answer: 92 to 99%
Almost all of them hold on — by comparison, ordinary hospitality start-ups fail in droves. Co-ownership itself is the survival factor: someone who has put €500 into it turns up on a Thursday as well, brings the neighbours along and does not let “their” pub go under. Getting there takes a long time, though — only one in nine groups manages the takeover at all.
Worth keeping: People who own a share turn up on Thursdays too.
Sources:
Morning Advertiser 2026 · Plunkett UK, Community Pubs 2024
18. A British programme supports pubs with small grants plus advice from industry professionals. How much community benefit does every pound invested there create? (also in the short round)
- a) around £1
- b) around £3
- c) over £8
- d) around £20
Answer: over £8
The trick is not the money but the combination: a small grant plus knowledge. Austria provided the counter-test — there, pubs received up to €10,000 with no selection and no support, and of 57 funded venues around one in five had closed again before long. Same sum, without support: gone to nothing.
Worth keeping: Advice before money — money alone saves no pub.
Sources:
GOV.UK on Pub is The Hub · WKO on the Lower Austrian pub grant (German) · profil on the Lower Austrian pub grant (German)
19. France is bringing village cafés back to life with its “1000 cafés” programme. What percentage of the budget goes into supporting the licensees there — selection, training, network?
Answer: 71%
71% of the budget is support staff — almost three quarters of the money goes into people, not into walls. The French have understood what all successful programmes have in common: the licensee is the bottleneck — and the most important investment.
Worth keeping: People, not walls.
Source:
Groupe SOS, “1000 cafés” 2024 (PDF, French)
20. The political scientist Oliviero Angeli (TU Dresden) sums it up in one sentence: “What matters is not the beer, but …” (also in the short round)
- a) the price
- b) the opening hours
- c) the location
- d) the people you meet
Answer: the people you meet
Pubs are infrastructure against polarisation: they bring together people who otherwise have little to do with each other, and who talk about the missing cycle path instead of the big outrage topics. Listening corrects your own prejudices. That is exactly why the decline of the pub is more than an industry problem — and the comeback more than nostalgia.
Worth keeping: What matters is not the beer, but the people you meet.
Source:
Angeli (TU Dresden), dpa/ZEIT (German)
Round 5 · Pub lore
Where does all this actually come from?
101. Where does the German word Kneipe, meaning pub, come from?
- a) from the waitress's pinch
- b) from 18th-century student slang
- c) from the Dutch knijp for the beer tap
- d) from Kneipp, the water-cure doctor
Answer: from 18th-century student slang
The Kneipschenke appeared in Upper Saxon German in the 18th century, and student slang shortened it to Kneipe. Probably — the dictionary puts it that cautiously — the root is kneipen, to squeeze or press together: the oppressively narrow room. What was meant first was the small, second-rate tavern. The mocking name became a badge of honour, because the tight space was never the shortcoming. It is the concept: sit shoulder to shoulder and you end up talking.
Worth keeping: The tight space is the concept.
Source:
DWDS, word history of “Kneipe” (German) — The DWDS (German) calls the derivation from kneipen 'probable' — so it stands here as a conjecture, not as a fact.
102. The English word pub is short for what?
- a) public bar
- b) public house
- c) people's union bar
- d) not short for anything
Answer: public house
Pub has been recorded as a short form of public house since 1859 — literally the house open to the public. The English wrote into the word what a pub is: a living room that belongs to everyone. That is exactly what researchers mean when they talk about the third place — the place alongside home and work.
Worth keeping: Pub means public house: the living room for everyone.
Source:
Online Etymology Dictionary, “pub”
103. The Reinheitsgebot of 1516, Germany's beer purity law, permits water, barley and hops. Which ingredient is missing, the one without which there is no beer?
- a) carbon dioxide
- b) sugar
- c) yeast
- d) salt
Answer: yeast
The 1516 wording names only Gersten, Hopffen und Wasser — barley, hops and water. That does not mean yeast was unknown: the Bamberg ordinance of 1489 listed it explicitly, and brewers had always used it. What was unknown was how it worked. Only around 340 years later did Pasteur show that yeast turns malt sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. So the carbon dioxide in the glass is the work of the yeast — not an ingredient.
Worth keeping: Yeast is missing from the Reinheitsgebot. It did the brewing anyway.
Sources:
Historical Lexicon of Bavaria (German) · German Brewers' Association (German) — Two sources (German): the wording of the ordinance in the Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, and the explanation ('how it worked was not yet known') from the Deutscher Brauer-Bund.
104. Eilsbrunn in Bavaria is home to what the Guinness Book of Records calls the world's oldest continuously run inn. Since when has it been serving there without a break?
Answer: 1658
The Gaststätte Röhrl has been serving since 1658, in family hands, by now in the eleventh generation; the Guinness Book of Records confirmed it in 2010. More than three and a half centuries of wars, crises and fashions — and still open. Pub closures are no law of nature. There has always been a way to carry on.
Worth keeping: Open without a break since 1658 — the decline of the pub is no law of nature.
Source:
Gaststätte Röhrl, Eilsbrunn (German)
105. Roughly how many breweries are there in Germany today?
Answer: around 1,400
Destatis, Germany's federal statistical office, counts exactly 1,415 breweries for 2025, 588 of them in Bavaria — more than in almost any other country in the world. So the decline of the pub is not down to the beer. They are down to the places where people drink it together. Although this figure points downwards too: in 2024 there were still 1,459.
Worth keeping: Around 1,400 breweries. What is missing is not the beer, but the place.
Source:
Destatis, brewing industry 2025 (German)
106. What is a Herrengedeck?
- a) a place setting reserved for the Stammtisch, the regulars' table
- b) beer plus Korn, a grain schnapps
- c) the landlord's breakfast
- d) two beers at once
Answer: beer plus Korn, a grain schnapps
A beer and a schnapps, served side by side — the classic of the Eckkneipe, the corner pub. What exactly stands beside the beer is a regional matter, though: Korn in the Ruhr area, Jägermeister in Berlin, a Piccolo of Sekt, a small bottle of German sparkling wine, in eastern Germany and Hamburg. So anyone calling out 'round here it's Sekt' is right as well. The name stays a wink everywhere: Gedeck sounds like fine dining and means the opposite.
Worth keeping: Herrengedeck: a beer, a schnapps — the rest is a regional matter.
Sources:
DWDS, “Herrengedeck” (German) · Wikipedia, regional variants (German) — The core — a beer and a schnapps — is in the DWDS (German). The regional variants we summarise from Wikipedia; there is no institutional source for them.
107. What is the waiter called in a Cologne Brauhaus, the pub attached to a brewery?
- a) Schängche
- b) Köbes
- c) Halver Hahn
- d) Zappes
Answer: Köbes
The name goes back to Jakobus, which in the Kölsch dialect becomes Köbes. With it come a blue woollen jumper, a leather apron, a leather money pouch and the metal Kranz full of Kölsch glasses — plus a gruffness that is part of the ritual: refills arrive unasked until the guest puts a beer mat on top of the glass. Ordering in a Brauhaus is not a service, it is a game.
Worth keeping: The Köbes keeps bringing refills until the beer mat goes on the glass.
Source:
KölnTourismus on the Köbes (German)
108. In the Ruhr region, what is a “Trinkhalle”?
- a) a sports hall with a bar
- b) the Büdchen, the kiosk on the corner
- c) a style of beer tent
- d) a brewery warehouse
Answer: the Büdchen, the kiosk on the corner
Kiosk, meeting point and news exchange in one. The huts appeared from the 1870s onwards — as Trinkhallen, drinking halls for industrially bottled mineral water — and later often secured a living for disabled war veterans and miners' widows. In 2020 the state of North Rhine-Westphalia recognised them as intangible cultural heritage. Of once more than 20,000 kiosks, around 2,000 are left: the same story as the decline of the pub, only in pocket format.
Worth keeping: Of 20,000 Büdchen, around 2,000 are left.
Source:
LVR Institute for Regional Studies (German)
109. Altenburg in Thuringia, the birthplace of Skat, the German card game, still has an institution of its own today. Which one?
- a) a Skat ministry
- b) the International Skat Court
- c) a Skat university
- d) a monument to the jack
Answer: the International Skat Court
Founded in 1927 at the 11th Skat congress in Altenburg — initially to turn the regionally differing ways of playing into a single set of rules. To this day it rules on disputes from the pub table in writing and with reasons given; in 2011 there were more than 400 enquiries. Perhaps the most German institution there is: even the Stammtisch, the regulars' table, has a court of appeal.
Worth keeping: Even the Stammtisch has a court of appeal.
Source:
German Skat Federation (German)
110. Why are so many village inns in Brandenburg and northern Germany called “Krug”, the German word for jug?
- a) after the beer jug
- b) “Krug” is an old northern German word for a public house
- c) after a landlord family named Krug
- d) pure coincidence
Answer: “Krug” is an old northern German word for a public house
Middle Low German “krōch” meant inn or tavern — it also gave Dutch “kroeg”; in the 16th century the word moved into standard German. With the “Krugrecht”, the jug right, the sovereign granted the licence to serve drinks commercially, often tied to the right to brew. That made the village Krug frequently older than the school and the parish office — and it was wanted by the authorities: a village needed a place to negotiate, celebrate and argue. Anyone closing the last Krug today closes an institution that was considered indispensable for centuries.
Worth keeping: The village Krug was wanted by the authorities — older than the school and the parish office.
Sources:
DWDS, “Krug” (German) · German Legal Dictionary (German) — Two sources (German): the word in the DWDS dictionary, the Krugrecht in the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch of the Heidelberg Academy. The DWDS explicitly does not cover the Krugrecht.
Round 6 · Myths at the bar
Which of them are actually true?
111. A good Pils takes seven minutes to pour.
Answer: False — two to three minutes are enough
The trade view: the whole pouring process takes two to at most three minutes, after which the glass belongs empty in two or three goes. The seven-minute rule dates from the era of old beer taps, when a Pils also had considerably more carbonation than it does today. After seven minutes the beer is not better but flat and too warm — and pouring in advance counts as an absolute no-no in the craft of pulling a beer.
Worth keeping: Seven minutes make no better Pils, only a warmer one.
Source:
HOGAPAGE on pouring time (German)
112. Clinking glasses comes from the Middle Ages: a hearty clink made beer slop over into the other glass, ruling out poisoning.
Answer: False — a fine legend
The poison explanation cannot be clearly documented — that is the honest state of things. There is even a competing explanation: in the 16th century, loudly clinking glasses counted as audible proof that the host could put a glass of their own in front of every guest. Drinking a toast in its present form can be traced in the German-speaking world from the 18th century onwards. The poison story keeps being told all the same, and that too is pub culture: at the bar, the best story is often more important than the true one. Now you know both.
Worth keeping: The poison story is not documented. It gets told anyway.
Source:
Wikipedia, “Zutrinken” (German) — A deliberate exception for Wikipedia (German article): there is no institutional source for the legend or its counter-explanation. What is documented here is mainly what is not documented.
113. The Bierdeckel, the German beer mat, was invented as a coaster.
Answer: False — the name comes from covering
In the 19th century wealthy guests drank from Seidel tankards with a pewter or silver lid, ordinary people from jugs without one. Felt discs served as coasters — the same felt discs that people laid on top of the jug outdoors so that neither leaves nor insects fell into the beer. The name comes from that covering function: Deckel means lid. So it was a coaster as well, but it is named after the lid. From about 1880 it was made of cardboard and printed on; in 1903 industrial production started in the Murg valley — and alongside it came its career as a notepad, calculation sheet and tally list.
Worth keeping: The Bierdeckel is named after the lid, not after standing under the glass.
Sources:
HOGAPAGE on the history of the beer mat (German) · Wikipedia, “Bierdeckel” (German) — The core — beer felts as coasters and as covers, the name from covering — comes from HOGAPAGE (German); Wikipedia adds the manufacturing history from 1880 onwards.
114. “Prost” is a thoroughly German word.
Answer: False — it is Latin
“Prosit” is Latin, the third person singular subjunctive of “prodesse”, to be of use — literally “may it be of benefit”. In the middle of the 16th century the word came into German, first as a wish after a sneeze, then as a toast. Anyone clinking glasses has been speaking a small Latin blessing ever since, one that originally belonged to sneezing. In that spirit: Prosit — to the pub.
Worth keeping: Prost is Latin: “may it be of benefit”.
Source:
DWDS, “prosit” (German)