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A cold and blustery afternoon in a south Berlin suburb and Stefan Hamberger is slumped in his doorway, gawping at his visitor.
"I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand," he croaks, slack-jawed with shock. "Please could you repeat that."
"Of course. My name is Bernd Dressler and I am the owner of The Separation Agency. I am here on behalf of your girlfriend and my client, Anne-Marie. She has hired me to terminate your relationship," repeats the neat, clipped voice.
"Is this some kind of joke?"
"Hardly," says Dressler, smoothing his already smooth hair, brandishing an official-looking document and going in for the kill.
"Anne-Marie has given three reasons — your poor communication skills, lack of commitment and your flirting with other women.
"She does not want to hear from you again. She does not want to be friends. Do you understand what I’m saying? Your relationship is over. Finished."
Dressler, 52, may be tall, athletic and - if you like men who iron their jeans, tuck in their jumpers and wear black loafers polished into little mirrors " easy on the eye, but he is not a man you’d want to come knocking uninvited on your door.
Because Dressler makes his living by ending relationships and, for as little as £13, will dispose of your unwanted partner without so much as an ‘if’, a ‘but’ or an ‘I promise I’ll change’.
As his 62nd ‘victim’ reels back at the news, the self-styled relationship terminator gives me a conspiratorial wink from behind his designer specs and explains how it works.
There are four different termination packages. The cheapest is a phone call, or ‘phoner’ — a snip at just £13.
Clients can opt for the soft and sensitive ‘Let’s be friends’ package, or kick him (or her) where it hurts with the ‘Leave me alone’ option, in which Dressler puts on a much sterner voice to discourage further contact.
For a few pounds more, he’ll write them a letter, although he discourages this option because ‘it’s a lot more work and not worth it for me, commercially’.
Finally, at the deluxe end of the scale, and provided your soon-to-be-ex lives within the Berlin area (or you are prepared to pay Dressler’s travelling expenses), for £33.50 he will make a Personal Termination Call, clad in his immaculately pressed slacks and deliberately jaunty polo shirt (he considers a suit to be a bit alienating).
He will even pick up your things from an ex-lover’s apartment for an extra £19 per bag. The opening script is always the same, unless it’s a phoner, which he starts with "Are you driving?"
"I don’t want any car crashes and traffic jams on my conscience," he explains.
The rules are simple. No marrieds, no crazies, no one of a violent disposition and no ‘hit’ without three good reasons.
"I was forced to introduce this rule a couple of months ago when a 16-year-old girl told me her boyfriend was 'getting on her nerves.' How ridiculous! I wasn’t going to get out of bed for that."
Oh, and payment up front, of course. In case anyone changes their mind. (No one has, yet.)
By the time his clients come into his office - opposite Woolworths in a well-off suburb of south Berlin - their minds are made up, he says. And payment always focuses the mind.
It is just three months since this former insurance manager - after 28 years in the same company he was made redundant and needed an income - started terminating. But clearly he is a natural.
His company, The Separation Agency, is doing startlingly brisk business and his phone is ringing off the hook with new clients, desperate for a clean break. Dressler likes to think of it as an upside down dating agency.
"If you want to have a new partnership then you have to quit your previous one. It’s the same market in reverse - a symptom of our increasingly disposable society.
I simply offer a service so I try not to judge, but I can’t help feeling that young people these days treat relationships like an empty Coke can - when it’s finished they just toss it away and find another one."
While Herr Dressler’s style is certainly unique, the concept is not. Remember Phil Collins brushing off his second wife by fax in 1994, and a year later Daniel Day Lewis faxing his French actress girlfriend Isabelle Adjani, who was seven months pregnant at the time, to inform her that he was leaving her?
And in 1996, during an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Matt Damon announced he was no longer dating Minnie Driver - news not just to Oprah and her audience but also to Minnie herself.
The Separation Agency was the brainchild of Dieter Krueger, a psychologist whom Dressler dismisses as so soft-hearted and good at resolving people’s problems that he counselled himself out of a living.
Happily, Dressler - who snapped up The Separation Agency for just £335 on eBay (where else?) shows none of that weakness.
"I’m not a therapist and I don’t want to know," he beams. "Time is money - I’m not interested in having any sort of discussion and I’m not affected emotionally. I like to keep each job down to five minutes maximum, ideally three."
But what if his ‘victim’ breaks down weeping? ‘I’ve very rarely seen a tear — people are usually too shocked — but if someone starts crying or gets all emotional, I simply reiterate that I am only there to pass on the message.
"Occasionally, if I feel a bit sorry for them, I’ll throw them a bone - “X says she still has fond memories of that time you went on holiday together, or X really loved you in the beginning…”
"That usually takes the edge off things. But generally I’lI make myself scarce. The only thing that surprises me is that every time is the same. There’s irritation. Then incredulity - where’s the hidden camera? But once I show them the contract, it starts to sink in."
Since he started trading in August, he has terminated more than 120 relationships, half of them in person. And while he cannot yet live on the profits, business is certainly booming. Two thirds of his clients are women. They range in age from 16 to 44 and jam his answerphone on Mondays (following yet another rubbish weekend) and after public holidays.
"I’m hoping for a bumper week after Christmas," he grins. But isn’t it just the teeniest bit depressing being the grim reaper of relationships? "Not a bit of it," he trills. "It’s a job like any other. Why would it make me miserable? At least I’m not a bailiff - that would be awful.
"I’m just doing a service and it certainly doesn’t keep me awake at night. After all, it is they who have wrecked the relationship, not me."
Why, though, are so many people, particularly women, incapable of doing their own dirty work? Are we more cowardly?
"It’s not that you’re cowardly, exactly," he explains. "It’s more that women are more diplomatic. You don’t like confrontation and however many hints you drop, your boyfriends are determined not to pick up on them.
"Several of my clients were in relationships which they’d personally tried to end several times. But their boyfriend would give them that look - men can turn on the tears just as much as women - promise they’d change and they’d be back to square one."
After hearing about The Separation Agency on the radio, Katerina, 26, hired Dressler to terminate her boyfriend of four months, Nico, a catering manager who is also 26.
"The first few months were magical and beautiful,’ sighs the student and part-time researcher from Berlin. "Then something went wrong.’
Evidently.
Her reasons were lack of proper attention, poor communication and Nico spending too much time with his mum.
"But I still couldn’t finish it. I knew he would persuade me to reconsider, so I thought it would be much better for both of us if Bernd did it."
Katerina splurged on the top-of-the-range, in-person, ‘leave me alone’ package and hasn’t looked back.
Or, indeed, heard a peep out of Nico. She was, however, a little hurt by his reaction. "Apparently, he wasn’t upset at all. Not even a bit."
Indeed. Nico’s termination was a personal best for Dressler. "Ninety seconds, that’s all it took!’ he says. "I read my spiel and he just smirked and said: 'Fine, whatever.'"
After nearly three decades working in insurance, Dressler considers he has found his perfect job.
"Not just anyone could do this. It can be very nerve-racking. You have to be authoritative, firm and have some life experience, and I certainly have that.
"In my youth I fell in and out of love too much and too fast but now I know better and can control myself."
Although he has never been married - 'I play soccer all the time and spend hours reading newspapers, so I’m not lonely' - he met his current girlfriend, Bea, 44, just eight weeks ago. "I got her from an internet dating service, where else?"
So, is this the big one? Are they in love? "Er, I don’t think so," he laughs. "I suspect that one of us needs to hire The Separation Agency hitman, and it’s not her, if you see what I mean, heh, heh, heh…"
Like any other professional hitman, Dressler makes sure he files a report after every visit. "I keep it very short - time and date and a brief summary of his reaction." And it almost always is a him.
"I’ve only done one female termination face-to-face. I think men don’t like to spend so much money - maybe it’s because they usually have another lady lined up and resources are tight.
"But anyway, this woman was very, very shocked. She was fighting back the tears and shut the door very quickly."
Untouched by such emotional frippery, he chatters on, outlining his vision for the future.
"Next are offices in Cologne and Dusseldorf, then Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg. Why not the whole world!" he evangelises.
He’s already had an email from a gay man in Amsterdam who wants to ditch his boyfriend, and others from Thailand and Dubai.
The UK could be next. "I’m very hopeful that British people will embrace the idea," he says. "There’s certainly lots of interest and I think there will be a huge market."
Indeed, so confident is he that he’s currently looking for a sufficiently hard-hearted entrepreneur to snap up his UK franchise.
In the long term, however, the ultimate goal lies elsewhere. "Corporate separations!" he says, blue eyes gleaming.
"I’d love a contract with a big company to handle all their redundancies. That would be fantastic. And, of course, highly lucrative."
Meanwhile, back on his doorstep, Stefan is a broken man. "I can’t believe it. She told me she loved me," he whispers, head in hands. "Why didn’t she just tell me? I can’t believe she’d do this to me."
It gets worse.
"I am also here to collect some items," continues an unmoved Dressler, handing over a list that is reminiscent of The Generation Game conveyor belt: "Four pink towels. Large, squishy teddy bear. Red leather photo album. Cosmetic bag from bathroom...I’m sorry, but I cannot leave until I have them all.’
We wait in silence as an ashen-faced Stefan goes rummaging. When, finally, he re-emerges with a bag of Anne-Marie’s detritus, complete with large, squishy teddy bear, Dressler wraps things up on an uncharacteristic high note:-
"Thank you, and remember, there is always a silver lining. One unhappy couple can become two happy singletons."
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