Next year Marek Janowski (who had a German mother) gives up the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Yes, but the helm is taken (with immediate effect, I believe - Janowski has gone early) by Vladimir Jurowsky - who is no less "German" than Janowski, and grew up in E Berlin, where his dad was conducting. He is a dual German/Russian national. (Oddly enough he is billed as "German" here in Moscow).
I wouldn't call V Jurowsky exactly 'unknown' :) He is guest-conducting at the Bavarian State Opera over the next two months.
On the wider topic of your posting... perhaps the advent of modern transport, along with modern marketing, and heightened expectations from listeners everywhere that performers they hear in local concerts must be on the same level as top recordings... means that the age of the resident Kapellmeister is almost over?
I could not see many if any of the current crop of German conductors being offered a major orchestra outside of their native country.
Yes, they are too inflexibly rooted in the German repertoire (viz Thieleman). We were just discussing yesterday how the top conductors in Germany these days... Jurowsky, Sinaisky, Petrenko... are often Russians :) Perhaps this is the German
forte - to provide the organisation and resources, as
producers of musical events... and to in-purchase the top-level talent German audiences expect from all over the world, to fulfil their projects? Bayreuth, as never before, is now primarily a production company, for example. Who would have thought that we'd see Der Meister's operas staged there by an Australian, and conducted by a Russian? ;D