On the German-French couple - Matthias Gebauer, Leo Klimm, Martin Knobbe, René Pfister and Britta Sandberg in Der Spiegel:

‘These days, the French are uninterested in romanticizing the relationship. "Emmanuel Macron is a strategist. For the president, joint European action is a geopolitical necessity, not a romantic matter," people say at Élysée Palace, the president's official office.’

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‘On January 22, the Élysée Treaty, with which Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer once founded the Franco-German friendship, will turn 60 years old. To mark the occasion, Macron has issued an invitation to a ceremony at Paris' Sorbonne University and then at Élysée Palace. If all goes well, it is meant to send a message to the rest of Europe after a number of difficult months. There are few more ostentatious settings in which to succeed, or to fail, more gloriously.
"Not since the Treaties of Rome has there been a situation that necessitates such a comprehensive redefinition. Both countries must now define what the Europe of the future should look like," says Daniel Cohn-Bendit. The veteran Green Party politician is sitting in a brasserie in the 14th arrondissement, in Paris for a few days, as he often is. His hotel, which he books primarily because it runs on solar power, is next door.
Cohn-Bendit has been splitting his life between France and Germany for as long as he can remember. The 77-year-old is a war child. He is fond of conveying how he was born right after the Allied landings in Normandy. During the 1968 student riots in Paris, his native France banned him from entering the country. Cohn-Bendit, then 23, had previously called for the government's overthrow. Many years later, he became one of Macron's many unofficial advisers.’

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‘There actually were attempts to coordinate. As early as mid-December, the national security advisers of the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom held the first discreet talks on the next steps in arms deliveries. Everyone feared that the existing ring exchange of arms would soon no longer suffice. It has been reported that it was during those meetings that the idea emerged that the U.S. would supply Patriot systems to the Ukrainians, and there was also talk of tanks. At the time, officials in Berlin were unsure whether France would provide them.
For months, the Americans have wanted the Germans to supply Leopard 2 battle tanks in cooperation with other European partners, even if they have not expressed this publicly to prevent embarrassing Berlin. To Washington's annoyance, however, Chancellor Scholz is still today pretending there is a consensus between Berlin and Washington not to supply heavy tanks. Scholz has tried to make it look as though it is the Americans who are blocking the move.’

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‘In the past, the Franco-German friendship has always proven itself in difficult times. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt laid the foundations for the European Economic and Monetary Union in the 1970s. Then, after German reunification, François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl pushed ahead with negotiations for the Maastricht Treaty, which established what is now the European Union. In the summer of 2020, Merkel and Macron, as the driving forces in Brussels, pushed through joint borrowing at the EU level to counter the consequences of the pandemic – an instrument that until then had been considered a taboo by Germans.
But this winter, the crisis is mercilessly exposing the policy differences between Berlin and Paris. There has only been progress on one issue of contention in recent weeks: The project to build a European fighter jet has entered into the next round after tense negotiations. Paris-based aircraft manufacturer Dassault is to lead the consortium it has formed with Airbus, Indra, Eumet and other partners. This had by no means been a foregone conclusion. Dassault resisted for a long time because it was reluctant to share patents and technology with the competition.’

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‘When it comes to energy, too, the two countries are far more divided than they are united. The end of Russian gas supplies has made this particularly clear. France is fundamentally less dependent on gas than Germany because Paris relies more heavily on nuclear power in its energy mix. In addition, the French have a secure main supplier of gas in Norway. The energy crisis has barely hit French consumers in their pocketbooks so far.
Macron's government has largely protected them from price increases on the gas and electricity markets. Anything above a 4-percent increase in electricity prices has been paid by the state in recent months. This also explains why overall inflation in France is much lower than in most other European countries. It currently stands at just 6 percent.
When Scholz announced Germany's 200-billion-euro package to cushion the energy crisis at the end of September, he not only triggered fears in the rest of Europe that Germany would gain a competitive advantage within the EU. He also caused considerable irritation in Paris with the step. Germany's French partners hadn't been informed in advance. Sources in Paris like to note today that Scholz's chief of staff, Chancellery head Wolfgang Schmidt, had spent hours at Élysée Palace a few days before talking about "everything under the sun." He just didn't say anything about the planned bailout.’

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‘In his keynote speech on European policy that he gave in Prague in August, Scholz suggested Berlin was in line with Macron's ambitions for Europe, but he didn't mention France, Germany's closest ally, a single time. That was the first time Paris began questioning the chancellor's actual intentions.’

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‘With Scholz and Macron, two temperaments and two tempos are clashing that couldn't be any more different. "One, Scholz, speaks slowly, walks slowly, says few words, and waits a long time before saying anything all," is how one French diplomat described it. "Things can't go fast enough for the other guy. Speed is a quality in itself for Macron. He's ready to accept that things can go wrong in return."’

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‘"This war and its consequences call the German economic model into question," says Laurence Boone, secretary of state for European affairs at the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d'Orsay. "It is a major challenge for your country. Of course, France is also affected by all this, but less so than Germany."
Boone first began her new post as secretary of state this summer. The carpet in her office, which bears the colors of the European flag, is from her predecessor, a close Macron confidant. She doesn't really like it. But, she says, there are more important matters right now than replacing carpets.’

(…)

‘Right now, Boone says, officials in Berlin, at the French Foreign Ministry and Élysée Palace are working on a common "roadmap" that Scholz and Macron want to present on the anniversary on January 22. The plan is for a declaration that will provide a broad outline of plans for the next 15 years and address the question of what kind of Europe the Germans and French want, according to sources at Élysee Palace. The aim for the anniversary is to not get lost in the minutiae and to instead demonstrate unity and the future viability of the partnership. "This time, we can't afford for this meeting not to be a success," Boone says.’

Read the article here.

No romantic relationships, but stable enough I would say.

Scholz, the turtle, Macron, the hare.

And yes, the war in Ukraine is for several much more an existential crisis for Germany than it is for France.
But no one in the German political scene is questioning the ‘Westbindung’. Optimism is often superficial but the word ‘crisis’ appears here to be a bit of an exaggeration.