He sleeps in pyjamas, paints his walls yellow and over a year drinks 540 glasses of alcohol and has sex with his wife 117 times, as well as having erotic dreams 15 times a month.

She wears nighties to bed, likes baking, orchids and piling cuddly toys on the back of the sofa. She also has sex with her husband 117 times a year, consumes a total of 229 alcoholic beverages and dreams about sex five times a month. Together they have one child and shop at discount supermarkets such as Aldi or Lidl, three of which are located just five minutes away from their house.

Meet Mr and Mrs Average of Germany, whose profiles have been unveiled following the most comprehensive study ever to be carried out into the 'typical German'.

Offering a unique insight into what makes Germans tick, the study by Der Spiegel magazine has revealed that, despite Germans' oft-expressed desire to be different, the behaviour of most is in fact highly predictable. Gathering its data from statistics, opinion polls, home interviews and sales information, it concludes that the nation is more homogeneous than it has ever been.

The average Teuton family goes on holiday for two weeks a year, mainly within Germany, although their favourite destination is Majorca. He (45 years old) is 5ft 10in, she 5ft 5in. He is invariably overweight (83.5 kg) while she (67 kg and 42 years old) has mid-length hair, has sole responsibility for running the household and likes horoscopes and diet books. They both like Harry Potter.

Their favourite dishes - and these have not changed for years, despite globalisation's influence on the wide range of items now available - are lentils, curry wurst (sausage covered in curry powder and ketchup) and spätzle - egg pasta and schnitzel.

The benefits of the study are not immediately obvious, apart from informing advertisers and politicians about their audience. But the results are fascinating, revealing such an overwhelmingly uniform society that they have prompted fears that the country has fallen into a pit of monotony and dullness. It has come as a shock to Germans to find that, while they might think they are being refreshingly individualistic, they are actually, in large part, leading parallel lives.

'The situation is paradoxical,' commented Der Spiegel in a cover story that was dedicated to 'the average German'. 'In an age when total individuality is celebrated by some and painted as the source of all evil by others, a creeping uniformity is taking hold.

'We make our decisions far more uniformly than we believe, some stemming from forced necessity and others reached completely of our own free will. Even the greatest individualist, convinced that he is one of a kind, measures his happiness against the average person.'

The extraordinarily detailed survey, which delves into everything from the average car colour to the size of the average bathroom, to how often Germans masturbate and when they get up, and even what direction they take when they enter a supermarket, paints a portrait of a society which yearns for familiarity and for the necessities of life to be close to hand. Alarmingly, it does not appear to be one which particularly craves innovation, novelty or new climes.

The picture is all the more surprising since recent studies have shown the gap between rich and poor in Germany to be growing, slowly eroding the classless society of which Germans are so proud. While an obvious effect of this might be more divergent tastes, the opposite appears to be the case.

But as the study's authors suggest, it could be that Germans like being average because it signals stability and peace. A country which for years was defined by its warmongering attitude might actually consciously yearn for ennui, they suggest. Germans even have a nickname for being average, 'null-acht-fünfzehn' - '08/15' - the name of the standard-issue machine-gun used by Wehrmacht soldiers in the Second World War.

The study concludes that 'after turbulent centuries and catastrophic decades we have arrived in a state of a moderate, average democracy', in which being 'lost in the crowd' and 'public order' are in fact what citizens most desire.

What comes out in the end is a portrait of a people who are well-fed, well-educated, fairly satisfied and generally modest.

By the book

The average German...

· Has sex 117 times a year

· Wakes up at 6.23am

· Travels 24.5 miles a day

· Works 30.3 hours a week (41.4 hours in 1960)

· Drives a six-year-old silver metallic Volkswagen Golf which is washed nine times a year

· Walks towards the right when entering a shop

· Considers price to be more important than quality when shopping

· Has 971 sq ft of living space (a family of 2.2 people) which costs €408 a month in rent

· Dreams of stripping the woodchip wallpaper and laying down cherry or walnut parquet

· Takes 15 minutes to fall asleep

· Earns € 3,702 a month

· The following clarification was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday June 1 2008. We described '08/15' as 'the name of the standard-issue machine-gun used by Wehrmacht soldiers in the Second World War'. The MG08/15, based on the Maxim series of machine guns, was deployed by Germany in the First World War. It was only used in the Second World War where there was a shortage of the newer MG34 and MG42 by which it had been supplanted.