There are several forms of privacy here and it's important to make the distinction before arguing about what country has the better laws.

One form of privacy is about what information the government is allowed to gather about its citizens and what citizens can do about it. Before Snowden many would have argued that this is the US's strong point because of things like the 4th Amendment. Post-Snowden it is pretty evident that these rights have been hollowed out to the point where they have become meaningless.

The next form of privacy is about what information companies can collect and what you can do about that. In the US this is practically non-existent. It's the anti-thesis to the business models of lots of big companies like Facebook and Google. In Germany by comparison a company is legally required to inform you (in print, if requested) what information about you it has on records, who it has passed this information on to and to delete all of that information permanently at the end of a business relationship (e.g. if you want to delete your account). What's more, you have to give explicit consent to how your data is processed and used (this is why the TOS opt-in is legally necessary -- oh, and a TOS can not contain any unreasonable or unexpected clauses either).

The third form is about protecting your privacy against society. This tends to vary even within the same jurisdiction depending on who you are -- the protections may be different for persons of interest (including celebrities and politicians) or even depend on the situation (e.g. the privacy of a police officer may only be protected when they are off duty).

I'm German, so I'm obviously biased, but I can try to offer a nuanced explanation why I think German privacy laws are stronger than American privacy laws.

As I already said, companies require your ongoing consent to handle your personally identifiable information. In many cases, companies also have to be a privacy officer whose role is to oversee how that information is processed and to protect the privacy of customers or users. Of course there is a conflict of interest but misbehaviour can mean they are breaking the law (much like an accountant breaking the law because a higher-up tells them to).

In reverse, every commercial actor on the Internet (where criteria for commercial actions can be as simple as "receiving any money whatsoever" even if it's banner ads that barely cover your expenses) is legally required to provide contact information including a summonable postal address. This can be considered a limitation of privacy but also ensures users/customers can actually make use of their rights afforded by consumer protection laws. In other words: German law distinguishes between a right to privacy and a right to anonymity (the latter of which is not legally guaranteed by German law).

In terms of privacy from the government, Germany sadly shares the troubling problems of the US. Furthermore, thanks to post-war agreements (and follow-ups to those original agreements), several countries including the US basically have a carte blanche, especially when it comes to spying on German citizens. There is a cognitive dissonance between what Germans tend to think the government is allowed to do and what it actually does (and legally so, it seems) but both the Verfassungsschutz (the domestic security agency) and the BND (the foreign intelligence agency) have come under public scrutiny for worrying behaviour and potential corruption -- in the case of the Verfassungsschutz there is a strong indication that the agency focusses on left-wing extremists while blatantly ignoring the far more active right-wing extremists, either because of we actually had a left-wing terrorist organization in the past (the Baader-Meinhof group) or because it has an unfair systemic right-wing bias itself.

Finally, a lot of the paparazzi style "journalism" is illegal in Germany although there is a lot of leeway for celebrities and politicians ("Personen der Zeitgeschichte"). We don't have perp walks (though there have been episodes of an attempted "Americanization" of celebrity trials in Germany -- luckily heavily criticized in the parts of the media that didn't engage in it). If a friend shares a picture of you on Facebook they are legally required to take it down (as is Facebook) if you don't want it to be public and you can even sue for damages where appropriate (though good luck with that as the money you can get out of suing for damages in Germany is pennies on the dollar compared to the US).

I should also mention that every German adult has to have an ID card (with a biometric photo) and inform their local civic center whenever their address changes (to ensure there is always an official record of a summonable address). Contrary to popular belief you're not legally required to carry the ID card (unless you're driving a motor vehicle, in which case you also need to carry your driver's license and papers for the vehicle and have a valid license plate). In turn you don't have to register to vote (you will automatically be sent the documents you need to bring in when casting your vote as well as a form to sign up for a postal vote if you can't be at the voting center on that day).

Oh, and before I forget: unlike the special protection medical and legal confidentiality get, the banking confidentiality is not impenetrable in Germany. I don't think clerical confidentiality is either, but Germany's church-state separation leaves a lot to be desired (the ruling political party actually has "Christian" in the name and Merkel repeatedly said that Europe is founded on Christian values, the government collects church tax as an actual tax and pays up to 100% of the operating costs of "church-owned" hospitals, schools and so on -- I could go on for hours but the situation is pretty dire even if there isn't much public awareness of it).