To pee or not to pee is not the question for German men any more, but rather how? Is it nobler in the mind to be a Stehpinkler and urinate standing up? Or is it nobler to suffer, sit down, and be a Sitzpinkler?
What could be the last round in the battle of the sexes began when tenants in an apartment block near Dresden complained that the bathroom radiators installed two years previously were rusting. After spending DM12,000 (£4,800) to have a radiator scientifically analysed, the landlord, Mr Claus Burckhardt, got his answer: "Corrosion due to nitric acid in male urine".
He presented his 400 male tenants with new leases: "As the radiators are within the critical `spray area' of the toilet all male tenants must now sit to urinate or else replace rusting radiators when they move out."
Leading the resistance to the new regime is Mr Tilo Moller, who describes himself as a "known Stehpinkler".
"If dear God had wanted us to sit he would have changed how he fitted us out anatomically," he says.
His partner Annette thinks the new lease is just. "I find the splashes around the toilet an awful mess. We women have to sit, after all," she says.
Their lawyer thinks the law is unenforceable because "it interferes directly with the privacy of the tenant".
The psychologists have had their say as well: "Men consider it a privilege to urinate standing up. Take that away and they experience an identity crisis," says Dr Jo Stellmacher, a (female) social psychologist at the University of Marburg.
The Stehpinklers saw their case jeopardised when a mathematician submitted an impressive-looking formula to a newspaper. An average Stehpinkler with a "striking distance" of 55 cm sprays urine in a diameter of 1.28 metres, considerably larger than any toilet bowl, he wrote.
"A Stehpinkler leaves 5 ml of urine around the toilet bowl a time, that's 10 litres annually," deduced the mathematician, who insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisals.
According to Mr Klaus Schwerma, author of Stehpinkeln: Last Bastion of Mas- culinity? some 44 per cent of German men say they would sit down and become Sitz pinklers if it meant a quiet life.
Mr Matthias Dieter (28), from Dresden, has been a Sitzpinkler for six years and will never go back to standing. For him, it's a question of freedom. "I find it more relaxing, I have more peace. It's not that I have a problem with aim, it just means I can concentrate on other things rather than concentrating on being on target," he says.
The war is far from over but German men are certain of one thing: spending a pfennig will never be the same again.
