Certainly that can't be the whole reason why there's less of a fuss in Germany, but I'd submit that's potentially part of it. What's your media like? For that matter, what are your hot button issues?
The tv Germany is a mixed bag. You have the "Öffentlich Rechtlichen" a bunch of channels that are financed by mandatory fees and commercials. Two of them (ARD, ZDF) are pretty big, the rest are local and regional channels. The news that are shown on these channels are pretty decent and a lot people (although getting less) get their tv news there.
Then there is the ca. 15 bigger private channels that are owned by 2 big companies (Pro7Sat1MediaAG which is owned by two private equity companies and the RTL-group which is the biggest European TV company. )
The news that are shown on these channels are more infotainment and sensationalist than the ones on ARD/ZDF, but to varying degrees. NTV a 24-hour news channel owned by RTL-group has pretty decent news, but at RTL2 90% of the time is devoted to Paris Hiltons jailtime and Britney Spear's hearcut.
Mostly the news don't have much of a political spin behind it and are pretty objective, but special political segments or reportages on ARD/ZDF are pretty leftleaning.
Even on private channels the news segments don't feel as "showy" as many of the American 24hour news channels.
Regarding newspapers the image is much bleaker. The BILD is the biggest newspaper in both Germany and Europe and the 3rd biggest in the World, selling 3.5 million every day. It's a very aggressive tabloid style newspaper that rants against "freeloaders", politicians and pretty much everything that crosses its way. It routinely manipulates facts and prints deliberately untrue statements.
The next biggest paper is the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which only has acirculation of 400.000.
Bild is leaning pretty much in the direction of the CDU, Germans conservative party, but also publishes some aggressive articles against "overblown capitalism".
The former chancellor Gerhard Schröder once said "In order to gouvern I only need Bild, Bams (the Sunday edition of Bild) and TV"
Most of our hot-button issues at the moment are tied to unemployment. People taking advantage of the Unemployment insurance is something that comes pretty often from the right, the left counters with poor grandmothers that have to survive on catfood.
General minimum wages (we only have them in specific sectors right now) and job security also come up regularily.
Immigration and integration is also something that is debated pretty hotly. Terrorism and the curtailing of civil liberties also sparks a lot of discussions both from the left and from the right.
Religion is pretty much out of the picture, except when it is Islam. There were some pretty intense debates whether Islamic teachers should be allowed to wear headscarves in school.
Environmentalism is also big, though not as big as it was 10-15 years ago.
The German part in the War on Terror (small as it may be) is debated in newspapers and the public, but not so much in the political arena (where everybody except the socialistic Linkspartei has more or less the same oppinions)