The use and access of those logs is strictly regulated, and yes, it is enforced.
Given that Germany has a much healthier employee representation than the US, it's much more difficult for management to slide in surveillance under the radar. (It's also rather painful if they get caught)
I wonder if those German workplace freedoms stem from a different legal system of culpability.
In some US states, for example, an employee who commits a crime using his employer’s computer has opened up his employer to civil liability. If the employer can show that the employee actively sidestepped the employer’s controls, the employer can make a good case against liability.
I wonder if anything like that can happen in Germany. If not, then employee privacy on employer-owned devices makes sense.
Usually, the locale employee organization ("Betriebsrat") will negotiate a contract with the employer ("Betriebsvereinbarung") where the usage of company equipment for private use is regulated. Haven't read one in years, but would assume, that this case is handled there, and gives the employer the right to check logs etc in case of criminal/legal inquiries.
“In some US states, for example, an employee who commits a crime using his employer’s computer has opened up his employer to civil liability. “
I always find this reasoning strange and inconsistent . Companies give company cars to employees which could injure people. Or I could stab somebody with an employer provided knife.
It's likely an effect of data privacy being established as one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the German constitution and further strengthened by specific laws like the German data privacy law, which is a lot older than GDPR.
Interestingly data privacy (more precisely the "Recht auf informationelle Selbstbestimmung") is not named explicitly in the constitution, but has been "created" by the German constitutional court in 1983 in the context of a law suite against the German census of 1983 [1].
Historically I would argue all of this is the result of the experience 1933-1945 and also the (what was known at that time) experience in East Germany, the communist German Democratic Republic.
Given that Germany has a much healthier employee representation than the US, it's much more difficult for management to slide in surveillance under the radar. (It's also rather painful if they get caught)