A process for recovering acrylic acid, including: a) division of a heated mother acid stream in direction of an absorption a condensation column and a dissociation column; b) feeding of a heated mother acid substream as runback to the dissociation column; c) feeding-in of at least one stripping gas stream to the dissociation column; d) feeding-in of a secondary component stream comprising oligomeric acrylic acid from the absorption column to the dissociation column; e) dissociation of part of oligomeric acrylic acid in the dissociation column to give monomeric acrylic acid; f) removal of secondary components comprised in the secondary component stream in the dissociation column; g) discharge of monomeric acrylic acid as gas mixture with introduced circulating stripping gas stream from the dissociation column; and h) feeding-in of the gas mixture to the absorption column.