The feeling of slamming into second as you come out of a corner in a little sports car. In an automatic, its just a pedal and the wheel, in a manual you physically engage the warp mode. It feels good, gives a greater sense of power in your actions and also contributes to enjoyable familiar muscle memory. Humans dig physical ritual.
Germany is a huge exporter of precision-engineering so there might be a cultural sentiment there.
Not substantially.
>they're more efficient
Not any more.
>they make the most of small engines with limited torque.
Ding. Ding. Ding. We have a winner!
People like manuals because they can choose when to up-shift whereas the guys programming the automatic transmission will program it to up-shift as soon as they think they can get away with (for fuel economy and emissions). With a manual you can let your 1L hornets nest scream along at 4k all the time giving you close to peak power on tap whenever you want it. Basically manuals are a hack around regulations that force manufactures to build cars with performance characteristics nobody wants (under-powered engines and transmissions that up-shift at the drop of a hat). Those regulations are much stronger in Europe so the value proposition of a manual transmission is better there.
Can't do that with most automatics.
Well... performance characteristics that everybody wants -- for everybody else. They themselves want warp drive, but prefer everybody else help hold down the price of gasoline and the carbon content of the atmosphere.
then again i ride bikes too and prefer a more active driving experience
In the end, I think/fear that on average lazyness wins every time.