It's a requirement to have your picture on your resume? That seems rather antiquated and bias producing...

For very traditional companies, yes.

You even have photography shops specialized in doing CV photos.

https://www.studioline.de/fotoshootings-und-preise/bewerbung...

For certain of them you will also get points, if the CV is delivered in a nice portfolio folder, and there are whole sites dedicate to how you should organise the contents of it.

https://www.die-bewerbungsschreiber.de/bewerbungsmappe

Thankfully due to the uniformization of employment rules across UE and the fight against discrimination, that is slowly going away, specially in digital industry where you just get to send a PDF or fill out a form, instead of that bureaucratic process.

But if you are applying to a company where work colleges still talk to each other with formal "Sie" after working together for decades alongside each other, then expect that process to still be the way how everything rolls.

I remember a lot of this from when I lived in Germany.

I also seem to remember -- can you either correct me, or confirm this -- in these same companies that expect the photo resume, don't they expect your full salary history as well?

There is a saying, "He who talks money first loses." In the US, I'm certain that I've never seen a resume with salary figures.

While we're on Germany, why is it common practice in the German press to specify the age of any person in a print article? Even when it is irrelevant to the content of the article?

No idea actually.

I also always found it strange.