You only pay 42% for anything above 57,000€. Germany does have progressive income tax.
In 2021 in Germany for an income of 60,000€ you need to pay 11,735€ income tax, roughly 19.5%. there is also no soli tax anymore unless you are earning a top-2% income.
Anybody who is usefully skillful and economically useful will be earning north of 57k. Anybody who is all that and earning less than the equivalent German is a means to keep salaries low. There is an oversupply of cheap labour fuelling the Niedriglohnsektor already.
That also means that high-performing individuals with an already appropriately high base income will be paying 42% on any € pay increase, which is not a good incentive to make people work more and/or more stressful and/or more highly skilled jobs /in Germany/. Why here, if you can be highly skilled and high earning in Switzerland and be able to achieve a multiple of net income and get a better pension system to boot?