They Are the Product of a Broker's Home

For many Germans, Ash Wednesday holds an extra measure of solemnity. It marks the end of the gay Fasching season, about the only time of the year when a middle-aged widower or a plain, bespectacled spinster can break out of the everyday litany of loneliness and--who knows? --find true love across a crowded beer hall. Of those who were still lonely as Fasching ended last week, many would not wait for next year's festivities; they will turn instead to one of West Germany's 200 marriage agencies, such as the booming "Institute for Elegant Individual Marriage Initiation." Chirped Bonn Marriage Broker Alice Paech on Ash Wednesday: "Now it will start all over again."

Wagnerian Supermen. For a "searching fee" that averages about $50, buxom Frau Paech and other professional Cupid chasers will methodically remake the whimsical old game according to cold Teutonic logic. Clients are interviewed for the necessary information--background, interests, social status, financial situation --and brought together through carefully matched briefing sheets. For about one in every three couples she introduces, Frau Paech manages to find the right combination, and collects a "success fee" equal to the searching fee--unless the happy couple forget to notify her that they are getting married.

West German papers are filled with such agency-placed ads as "A heart to give away--am 39, 160 [centimeters tall], alone, not ugly, but wearer of glasses," or "Hello, hello! What young man between 35 and 45 would like to try his happiness with me?" Agencies make a paunchy male sound like a Wagnerian superman, a wilting wallflower a paragon of charm and virtue. Many agencies put love on a chain-store basis, increasing the chance for a successful match by trading clients among as many as 32 branches. Drawing clients from every class and profession, marriage brokers account for 60.000 to 80.000 marriages every year.

Security First. Today's thriving trade is the outgrowth of a business that has had its greatest boom during the man-short years following World War II. The main reason for its growth, says an official in Bonn's family ministry, is that "there is a lack of real social life in West Germany today--we have become a little selfish and don't concern ourselves much with our fellow men." Known by the unromantic name of Ehlanbahnunsgewerbe --literally, the marriage-initiating business--it has inevitably attracted many brokers less interested in mating souls than coining Deutsche marks. "There are as many serious marriage agencies as there are Cabinet members in Bonn," a German magazine claimed recently.

But the customers seldom complain. Most seek financial security rather than good looks. Women are particularly fond of men from the Benelux countries, and are especially leary of bakers, butchers and innkeepers, afraid that they will ask them to help out with the business. And how about love? "Love," sniffs one German, "is for teen-agers--and Frenchmen."

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