Hey guys!
Thank you all so much for your generous information! I've been able to snip off the leads of the rotary encoder (after looking at it, yea, it is one.. :D) and desolder the remaining pins - thankfully without breaking any pads. Now that I have the part broken out, I'm not sure what kind of rotary encoder this is. Would I be able to use any encoder that's similar in size and amount of pins? Or are there different versions of encoders? Sorry about the confusion, first time working with encoders.
Greets
Philipp