In the end, I think/fear that on average lazyness wins every time.
The feeling of slamming into second as you come out of a corner in a little sports car. In an automatic, its just a pedal and the wheel, in a manual you physically engage the warp mode. It feels good, gives a greater sense of power in your actions and also contributes to enjoyable familiar muscle memory. Humans dig physical ritual.
Germany is a huge exporter of precision-engineering so there might be a cultural sentiment there.
Not substantially.
>they're more efficient
Not any more.
>they make the most of small engines with limited torque.
Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner!
People like manuals because they can choose when to up-shift whereas the guys programming the automatic transmission will program it to up-shift as soon as they think they can get away with (for fuel economy and emissions). With a manual you can let your 1L hornets nest scream along at 4k all the time giving you close to peak power on tap whenever you want it. Basically manuals are a hack around regulations that force manufactures to build cars with performance characteristics nobody wants (under-powered engines and transmissions that up-shift at the drop of a hat). Those regulations are much stronger in Europe so the value proposition of a manual transmission is better there.
Well... performance characteristics that everybody wants -- for everybody else. They themselves want warp drive, but prefer everybody else help hold down the price of gasoline and the carbon content of the atmosphere.
Can't do that with most automatics.
then again i ride bikes too and prefer a more active driving experience