The German railway system leaves a lot to be desired, no ticket gates/barriers from Augsberg to Essen via Munich/Dusseldorf and Dortmund
I agree that German stations are open. I strongly disagree that this is a bad thing.
In the
UK▸ , we choose to check tickets at major stations ... and just look at how many extra staff have been added at places like Chippenham, Bath Spa and Bristol Temple Meads to man the barriers, and at all the extra equipment needed as well, in many cases being awkwardly engineered in to the old buildings and at busy times not having the capacity to cope with surges without people having to queue to get through on arrival at their destination.
In Germany, they choose to spend their money / deploy staff to check that the public are following the rules in a different way. They have ticket checks on (some) trains, and staff who - sadly and as with
RPI▸ teams in the UK - rarely work alone. Their enforcement / fines are not something I have personal experience of, except from very occasionally seeing a team "having a chat" with a member of the public.
Different systems. Why, and what is the common objective of the system? The common objective is to ensure that people, for the most part, pay for the journey they make. Whether that's done by occasional checks with strong sanctions if you are found to be knowingly in breach of the rules, or by checking absolutely everyone on every journey, is something of a political decision.
I suspect, Infoman, that you are or have been in Germany recently and at first the lack of ticket checks feels disconcerting. Actually, I love it once used to it. It's wonderful, if ticketed, to be able to walk up to or from your train without a feeling that you are being processed and checked to see if you are a criminal every time (especially if the barrier refuse your valid ticket 'cos the system is too complex!) and it's really helpful having staff "hanging around in groups" who can answer questions and provide customer care. Contrast that with barrier staff who, especially after a train has just arrived, are so busy processing the queue throughs their bottleneck that they don' have the resource to answer queries.
Across Europe, you'll find that some countries (France, Spain) are barriered at major stations, but that most countries are not. The objective of ticket checking has to be to ensure fare collection and there are different ways. The chosen / best method depends on the size of the flows, the time between stations and journey metrics for checking between stations, the strength of the penalties, national psyche, the ease of purchasing tickets and the complexity of the fare system, and also the proportion of unticketed travel the operator is prepare to accept.
There is nothing much to be gained from checking law abiding travellers in and out. Actually much more effective to have stiff enforcement on those you are certain are knowingly repeatedly offending - and (yes) staff get to know who they are, and the experienced ones [staff] can actually target their checking. But, sure, it can disappoint to have gone to a lot of trouble to get the right ticket only to not even have it looked at.
Edit - to correct typos
