They did just great over the last 20 years. Germany was a toilet compared to the UK in the 1990s, now it is the other way around.
I was several times in Germany in the 1990’s (working with Zeiss, Leitz and some of their subcontractors in the Mittelstand). Bavaria is very charming indeed. It was most certainly not a toilet. And I visited post-wall Berlin, Leipzig and Jena.