DRESDEN (dpa) – Seldom has a study conducted by the Technical University in Dresden aroused so much publicity but then most of the research conducted here is not about sex.
For six months professor Karl Lenz and two assistants have been examining what they call the “institutionalization processes of couple relationships” under the prosaic title of research project 357. In other words matters of love, sex and fidelity.“These days everyone wants to know who are the better lovers, east Germans or west Germans,” said Lenz: The researchers are interested in more than just what happens at bedtime. They seek to find out the differences between couples in east and west Germany – starting with that fateful first glance.Respondents are couples who got to know each other in the 1950s, the ’70s, and the 1990s. “In this way we can see what taboos were swept away in the interim,” said Lenz. The researchers use one-to-one interviews as well as excerpts from cinema films and popular self- help books on relationships and maintaining them.“Until the l970s the self-help books in eastern Germany were very didactic whereas in the west there were already calls for more liberal relationships.” Lenz doesn’t believe, however, that this has anything to do with the differences between the communist system in east Germany and the democratic west.After talking to 30 couples chosen in Berlin, the Saxony capital Dresden and Frankfurt, the researchers agree on one thing. In the 1990s people came together much faster – but that doesn’t mean they were quicker to sleep with one another.“We were taken aback but it seems sexuality is not the decisive component when couples are formed,” said Lenz. The scientists are giving the lie to the widely-held opinion that physical attraction plays an increasing part in relationships.The team also discovered though that while people have usually experienced more relationships than before they mostly place great emphasis on fidelity.The early stages of a relationship seem to have changed the most down the years. “Since the beginning of the 1990s we have observed the melting away of all “behavioural conventions in this respect. Both partners have the right to seize the initiative. The traditional sexual roles no longer apply”.The legal validity of engagement before marriage is hardly ever invoked, something common 20 or more years ago. “These days it’s something of a rarity if two people announce their engagement. In the ’50s it was an essential milestone on the way to getting married.”The formation of households has also changed. “In the 1950s many newly-weds lived with their parents or in one-room flats. Today an apartment of one’s own is as much a part of growing up as getting a driver’s licence.”In Germany, this was only made legally possible after the scrapping in the 1970s of a law which made it illegal for a landlord to rent a flat to an unmarried couple.Long forgotten are the so-called “Bratpfannen-Beziehungen”, the German term (literally: frying pan relationship) for a man on the lookout for a woman who can provide a meal ticket. Other instances of people living together for purely practical reasons or material gain are now rare, said the professor.The study cost 178,900 euros to conduct and is designed to fill a gap in sociological research.“There hasn’t been much research into marriage and relationships,” said Lenz.The team plans next to study the mechanisms of marital crises and the breakdown of relationships. Despite his intense interest in the matters even Lenz has to confess that he still cannot say for certain what constitutes the ideal couple.
