So who are your co-founders? Are there any? To me, the problem is finding co-founders not bureaucracy. As others have pointed out, you don't need to get the "Gründerzuschuss". None of the German founders, I know, says that bureaucracy is the biggest problem. Sure they complain and they might hire more if they could fire more.

But the real problem, as the article says, is culture. Germany was once the country of the "Gründerzeit". But thats more than a century ago. Indeed, most of the big companies in Europe are way older than the republics they are based at.

I'm currently graduating from one of the top tier [1] engineering schools in Germany. None of my classmates that I'm friends with is really interested in startups. They are all going for Big Car or a Doctorate. And those guys are already more ventures than average.

[1] Not, that this says a lot. University quality is still way more equally distributed than in the US. But at least, there is some competition now. Not just over research grants but also about talented students. Ironically, my university is pushing entrepreneurship a lot. They even changed their slogan to "The Entrepreneurial University" http://portal.mytum.de/welcome/