German is not a pure SVO language rather it is classified as V2 (verb second language) in main clauses and SOV in subordinate clauses. At least I prefer to look at it in that - admittedly unsatisfactory - descriptive manner.[0][1]
There are some folks (like in Generative Grammar) arguing that it has an underlying SOV layer which makes kind of sense because it gets processed like half of the time essentially like pure SOV languages. But alas sometimes one size doesn't fit all. In English you have to go through the extraordinary effort of a wedding ceremony in order to utter the words in SOV order: "With this ring I thee wed." That is some pure SVO energy right here, only broken by love ;)
[0]https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/1057/german-...