You need not be Mormon. You can probably find the LDS church in your phone book. Eventually your major information sources are likely to be German civil records and German church registers. German civil records start in the Napoleonic times in regions west of the Rhine River, in 1874 in Prussia, and 1876 in all of Germany. German church records start as early as the 15th century, but for many areas extant records start only after the end of the 30 Years War in the 17th century, or later.
Further documents are also available in German archives.
Examples of available documents include tax rolls, emigration papers, land registers, wills, and court cases. Most of these have not been filmed by the LDS and are available only at the appropriate archive. Catalogs of the holdings of some archives are available in printed form in some US research libraries. Keep in mind a general rule of genealogy is to go from the known to the unknown, and not the other way around. For example, if your name is Bauer, you should concentrate on expanding the tree of Bauers related to you by examining documents that refer to them.