Hats off for our poor German friends. It's definitely not easy over there, but if you do the private torrent tracker + VPN combo, you can be relatively safe.

Rightsholders have seeders sitting in public torrents to grab IPs to sue about. Private trackers are essentially a "club" that only invites known users, (friends of friends) and as such, fewer (not zero) rightsholders are able to join, and as such, fewer instances of being referred to a lawfirm simply because there isn't anyone in the swarm who is a rightsholder who only wants your IP... because they don't invite those kind of people most of the time.

Rightsholders like how hanging fruit like public torrents. Private trackers help take a lot of the stress away.

However, I don't know how it works in Germany so maybe rightsholders over there are more zealous.