They have earned their reputation, good and bad.
Exceptions show nuance, but they don’t undermine this reputation to the point of irrelevance.
No, I stand by it.
And if it’s reading comprehension you struggle with I’ll reword it for you:
Germans have earned their reputation for being unusually robotic, cold, strict, pragmatic, etc.
There are still a lot of Germans that aren’t like that, but these exceptions don’t rule out the stereotype completely.
I’ll add that this reputation might be due to how the German social strata is ordered, what kind of person succeeds, rises to the top, and interacts with other people abroad. It’s not necessarily due to an overall difference in behavior broadly present in the total population.
It’s like how Americans have a ridiculously low level off trust compared to other developed countries, and how Russian largely don’t give a shit about anything beyond their doorstep. (Тебе больше всех надо?) Sure, generalizations can be unfair and at risk of being completely wrong, but I don’t think this one is.