Not the parent, but I live in Germany and while the new coalition government is expected to push for moving he public pension system to stock based pensions, the current system consists of a public pension system (that employees pay into via their employer to pay out current recipients who previously paid into it) and a private pension system everyone is strongly encouraged to pay into. As I understand it the private system is not directly tied to the stock market though.

For most people outside the very niche finance and tech investment bubbles stocks are largely understood as a form of gambling and managed funds as a high yield alternative to a savings account with a small risk of losing money (but this requires some disposable income so again this is somewhat self-selecting).

The ordinary Hans Wurst (German Joe Blow) just follows the economy section of the news for a general feeling of if things are going good or bad because line goes down means prices go up and they probably won't get a raise.