Many thought the same, but going through the German court system was apparently too much effort. In the end, Germany's transport infrastructure is (despite all complaints) one of the densest and modern on the planet. The need for this simply isn't there when your target group is very specifically the traffic Hamburg-Berlin-Munich and nothing else. And the German railway opted to just upgrade/rebuild the existing tracks as ICE high speed tracks, the time advantage of Maglev would be what, maybe half an hour or so? Actually, 18 Minutes. Mind you, the high speed track was planned to use existing tech and bring trains Hamburg-Berlin in 60 minutes, that is maglev range already. It was abandoned because it was not considered economically viable.
I agree that the actual resentment in the population was retarded, but I also agree that economically it just wasn't strictly necessary. Whereas China at the time was legit still running steam locomotives. And Japan... well, if it's shiny and new, they want it. Japanese people do not seem to have the aversion to new tech that good ol' Europe has.