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I've never seen an ATM that was only open during bank hours. However, a lot of smaller branches have switched over to not having the ATMs open 24 hours anymore and will close doors sometime around midnight or so. This is due to theft risk. Over recent years, it has become a fairly common heist tactic to attack ATMs, originally with methods like "put a steel cable around it, tie it to a truck and pull the entire thing out of its armaments to carry it away and crack it later", but nowadays they usually just pump propane gas into it and blow it up. Yes, i know, the money cache inside is secured with paint bombs and things like that, but apparently there are ways around that if you know what you're doing. And the crews who specialize in these heists absolutely do, because they took a pretty close look at the inner workings of ATMs back when they still stole the entire machines. Cops actually found a workshop in the Netherlands where these things up were set up to practice both cracking the money caches and blowing up the machines to get to the caches. And these people are fast. Takes them just a couple minutes from arrival to speeding away in something like the Audi RS6 mentioned in the article (high speed getaways are a standard part of these heists).

This happens a lot. Like, we're talking a break-in every other day in Northrhine-Westphalia (the state bordering the Netherlands), and this thing has been going on for a couple of years. The cost of reinforcing all ATMs would be too high compared to the amount of money inside the machine, so the banks have decided that their solution to this is to restrict opening hours instead. Their customers are used to being treated like shit by their banks anyway, so they go along with it.

It's Germany, almost none of it makes sense. What's even more upsetting is that everyone knows lots of things don't make sense, but they will stubbornly insist you follow all their rules, because 'they're the rules. They must be followed'. Also forget about suggesting the rules be changed into making sense, then you're being 'difficult' and 'not contributing to the common harmony'.

The ostensible reason is that many ATMs are inside bank branches, and if the branch is closed, the ATM is out of reach, so, no ATM. If you point out this is silly, and defeats the purpose of having ATMs, and what if you need cash at a time the bank isn't open, you'll be tut-tutted and told to "plan better. Your lack of preparation isn't everybody else's problem" (they love saying this about everything)

Many German people are lovely people, and I love some of them, but they can be infuriating sometimes.

Well the bank teller that lives inside the machine needs to go home sometime.

I misremembered the details, but I studied it for my Master's degree, in my European Law and public policy class. It was large bills, but the outrage was the same.

You underestimate the German obsession with cash and how they have this sovereign citizen-esque fear that 'the man' is going to come after them any time now, and that they will use their bank movements to fuck them over. Which, I guess is a realistic fear to have, but they're coming at it in a uniquely German fashion, and from very post-left and libertarian position, rather than an actual critique of state power. As a result, there's bits of Germany where they will not take any payment except for cash and bitcoin.

They also love complaining about taxes, and therefore dodging taxes, except for the actually silly ones, like the church tax you get deducted from your paycheck every month, and that requires you to register your religion with the state, so they know which religion the money goes to.