Why do German and US Layout only differ by Y and Z?

The US and German character layouts only differ by the Y and Z characters, those are exchanged. There is the subtlety that the US character layout usually comes with an ANSI button layout (slim enter) whereas the German character layout is usually with the ISO button layout (large enter).

While looking for the history of this, one often finds that the relative frequency of characters is different in German and English. The letters on the typewriter become entangled when used too fast, therefore one needs to space frequently used characters apart. This is okay, I do see this difference in relative frequency of the characters “Y” and “Z”.

However, why did they stop there? Why did they only change two characters and not design a completely different (like DVORAK) layout for German (assuming English was first)? I am often in the situation where the two keyboard layouts are similar enough that my fingers can type really fast but now catch on the Y–Z thing fast enough. If the layout was completely different, I might have an easier time to switch between the layouts if needed.

So why do they only differ by exactly one permutation of the letters and nothing more (neglecting special characters)?

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