Well, it's not required, but it allows

use Encode qw( decode );

my $enc = 'utf-8'; 
my $germanText = 'Fräsen und ndk (Kamera - Fräsaufnahme)';
my $germ_str = decode($enc, $germanText);
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or even

use Encode qw( decode_utf8 );

my $germ_str = decode_utf8('Fräsen und ndk (Kamera - Fräsaufnahme)');
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to be reduced to

use utf8;

my $germ_str = 'Fräsen und ndk (Kamera - Fräsaufnahme)';
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Imagine manually decoding every string literal in the program like the OP did? Nonsense! Similarly, it's not necessary to add an encoding layer to STDOUT, but encoding everything passed to print would be ludicrous.