You are the one that does not seem to understand. There is no such thing as voting on issues at all in germany. We elect the political party we believe will tackle the problem in the way that aligns with our desired outcome. But the ordinary citizen has no say in the matter directly.
There is no voting on tax rate, zoning, abortion or whatever. Nowhere in germany. Neither localy nor nationwide. The only thing that could possibly be comparable would be a referendum where, for example, you have to collect 1 million votes and then you can submit this to the state as a request. But there is no guarantee they will even accept it.
I would not say that i fully trust our politicans, but there are significant checks and restrictions in place.
I mean, we had an all-encompassing totalitarian state that had absolute control over the country (or at least parts of it) 2 times in our history. We kinda learned the one or another thing from that.
And about the direct democracy thing. There have been and continue to be efforts to introduce more options. And I was an advocate myself for the longest time of my life.
But after seeing how some of the population behaved during Covid and how they are currently behaving in the East (where an ultra-right wing party has taken power) I'm not sure it's a wise idea to give more direct power to an uninformed, easily manipulated mob.
But thats a topic for another time.