Do you have a link to an article on this? My impression was that Germany was trying to move away from base load as a concept entirely, using unreliable renewables plus highly responsive fossil plants instead.
It being a German government publication it's in German unfortunately.
As far as I can tell from skimming it your impression is correct.
So I apparently misremembered the article, and my claim about base load a few posts above may be incorrect after all. Sorry, rsynnott.
However you're right that Germany was a net importer from (among others) France: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/180862/umfrag...
Which is surprising as I remember reading that France has tremendous difficulties satisfying their electricity demand, especially in winter (lots of electric heating apparently).