The situation is a little more complex than that. In principle, the vast majority of the Radwegebenutzungspflicht was abolished by a revision of the StVO in 1997, but in practice traffic authorities did bugger all about that. The Bundesverwaltungsgericht (the highest administrative court in the country) confirmed the 1997 measures by a definitive judgement in 2011, but as far as I can see very little has been done about even this since, e.g. where I tend to go in Germany, the required measures have not been taken, even though they've been promising for years that they will take them.
In simple terms, where there are certain traffic signs attached to sidepaths (either a blue circle with a white bike or the two kinds of blue signs that show pedestrians and cycles either side by side or one above the other), you can assume that the official decision ("Amtsentscheid") to impose the Radwegebenutzungspflicht still exists, even if this is in violation of the requirement to remove them except in very exceptional circumstances (e.g., for major dual carriageways, etc.) imposed by the 1997 revision and the confirmation of that by the Bundesverwaltungsgericht in 2011. I suppose you could try to explain that to any police officers who might stop you. :)
Unfortunately, the situation on the ground does not match the legal situation. In theory, the vast majority of the signs should have been removed by now. You can only hope that authorities get better at this.
Typical german law clusterf*ck. One of the reasons why I never managed to hack it back there, even though I am native german, is the "Paragraphenwald", the jungle of regulations and by-laws that is tripping you up at every corner, as if they want you to fail.
The situation is a little more complex than that. In principle, the vast majority of the Radwegebenutzungspflicht was abolished by a revision of the StVO in 1997, but in practice traffic authorities did bugger all about that. The Bundesverwaltungsgericht (the highest administrative court in the country) confirmed the 1997 measures by a definitive judgement in 2011, but as far as I can see very little has been done about even this since, e.g. where I tend to go in Germany, the required measures have not been taken, even though they've been promising for years that they will take them.
In simple terms, where there are certain traffic signs attached to sidepaths (either a blue circle with a white bike or the two kinds of blue signs that show pedestrians and cycles either side by side or one above the other), you can assume that the official decision ("Amtsentscheid") to impose the Radwegebenutzungspflicht still exists, even if this is in violation of the requirement to remove them except in very exceptional circumstances (e.g., for major dual carriageways, etc.) imposed by the 1997 revision and the confirmation of that by the Bundesverwaltungsgericht in 2011. I suppose you could try to explain that to any police officers who might stop you. :)
Unfortunately, the situation on the ground does not match the legal situation. In theory, the vast majority of the signs should have been removed by now. You can only hope that authorities get better at this.