Those requests would neither have been possible nor come in by such numbers if Germans were not privacy-aware.
otherwise it is visible to the whole world. that is a drastic difference for a privacy conscious person.
or consider for example me posting a picture of my house without giving any address. there is nothing identifying except the building. with streetview you could potentially find my address. why should you be able to do that?
sure, streetview is nice to use, but i think privacy concerns are real.
It would be difficult (impossible) for 8 billion people to come over to my street and stare at my house, in the physical world.
So it's very different to expose the view on the internet to all those 8 billion.