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Herbert O, 54, was accused by a teenaged girl of delivering more than just the package her family had ordered when he approached their house in August 2013.

The girl and her mother went to police the same evening to report the offending member protruding from his open pants zipper.

But Herbert has contested the allegations, saying that he is insufficiently endowed to trouble public order. He even called on his wife to take the stand and testify to his lack of inches.

“I'm sorry, darling, but your penis is too short to hang out of your trousers,” she told the local court in the town of Leer in East Frisia (Lower Saxony).

Confronted with this conflicting evidence, defence lawyer Lutz Winkler suggested that judge Ulrike Andrees check its believability herself.

“That was too uncomfortable for the judge” to do in court, he said.

Instead, Andrees has asked the coroners' office in Oldenburg to make an exact measurement of Herbert's hardware, giving her a yardstick for her final decision.

"If the wife has spoken out so frankly about this, I have to follow it up," she said.

Winkler has demonstrated an iron resolve to achieve “exoneration” for his client Herbert, having already refused to settle the charge in exchange for a fine.

They may yet have months to wait to see if the expert medical opinion stands up in court.

“We've never seen anything like this before,” said court manager Norbert Bruns.