In my experience of last 15 years in Surgical industry, we have found that the texture of German stainless steel is very smooth and is highly resistant to stains, and its because of tightly bounded molecules of elements, which occured only due to pressure and time, what ever you mix like chromium or other things they cant do the things which time and pressure has done in thousands of years, we used many kinds of steel in surgical instruments but what were the results, instruments break at a certain application of force, get stains, lost alignment, lost serrations quicker than german stainless.
If to make them harder more chromium is added, then instead of bending they break, which was not in the case of german stainless.
And thats why german stainless is expensive then all other stainless steels from all over the world.