That puts it too strongly. Yes, that the german state is collecting the money for the church is strange. The biggest political party calls itself christian. Then there is the habit of having religious institutions organize public daycare (kindergarten). Even worse is the Tanzverbot, forbidding public parties around easter, as that evokes fundamentally religious countries governed by church leaders, as in Iran.

But exactly that is not the case in Germany. There is no visible or noticeable influence of religious leaders, of church positions being unmoveable pillars of german politics. Many examples, divorce, abortion, same-sex marriage. With the paragraph above it is obvious that there is some influence, but it paints the wrong picture when looking at society and politics as a whole. The influence of christian fundamentalism on US politics for example is way bigger.

All of this is the effect of having done the separation of church and state over a hundred years ago, 1803 and earlier, but then stopping there. Afterwards there was a coexistence, varyingly strong, but nothing more.

Germans today simply aren't very religious, churches are mostly only visited on Christmas, and even then only by a small minority.