“It’s all about freedom,” said John C. Kornblum, a former United States ambassador to Germany, who has lived here on and off since the 1960s, and was once shouted at by a naked German for not taking off his swimming shorts in a whirlpool.

“Germans are both afraid of freedom and deeply desire it,” Mr. Kornblum said. “But hierarchy and rules are so embedded that direct political or social dissonance is simply not thinkable.”