My husband is Northern German, close enough to England that he was horrified at the thought of making tea in the microwave. And he doesn't even really drink tea when he's not sick.
Ha, my sister lives in Germany and the weirdest thing she finds about German tea habits is that they only drink tea in winter, which I guess is kind of on a par with being sick. In the UK tea is a constant but in Germany it seems to be more of a special circumstances thing (illness, cold weather...). Even the person my sister buys her tea from shuts up shop in the summer because there's no market for it.
Tea is an inefficient delivery system for caffeine. If there's no caffeine in it, it's a warm beverage that relaxes you. So why would the industrious German worker bee want to bother with tea bags when coffee is right there? Unless of course the bee is sick and needs to relax, doctor's orders, to get back to work as soon as possible. ;)