And so Caslon is presumably the quintessentially English typeface, while, unfortunately I can't think of the (Roman, not Fraktur) typeface associated with German. (Myself, I tend to associate Aldus - which could be called "Palatino Book" - with German.)

I’ve always thought that Walbaum felt quintessentially German — some kind
of beefed-up, slightly square-shouldered version of the neoclassical template.
And don’t forget that our perception of these faces may be tainted by what
some authors (which, in turn, were cited by other authors, and so on) wrote
about them — like D. B. Updike’s praise of Caslon’s intrinsic “Anglo-Saxon
virtues”.

based on those typefaces working well with the letter frequency characteristics of their respective languages, as well as their having a long history of association with them.

I think the first point (type design from a certain country goes well with language of that country) is mostly a myth. It is of course true that a type designer knows his own language best and probably pays more a attention to the local diacritical characters, certain letter combinations and so on. But in general: In scripts like Latin you can put any character beside any other character. There is nothing French, or Italian, or German about that. A good type design should work well in any language and I wouldn’t know that there is anything inherent in the general look of Garamond, Bodoni or Walbaum which make them especially suitable for one language, but not others. And saying the designs inherit certain virtues of a type designer of a certain area in the world where people are said to have certain virtues sounds even more far fetched.

The second point (association) is all that matters in my opinion. It’s not about the typeface design itself, but about the context in which they are used. These connotations make typefaces British, French and so on.

One factor is the frequency of capitalized letters, high in German and low in some other languages. A font with a low x-height would seem to work better for continuous text set in the latter group. So Germanic as a high x-height font?
Don

As for scripts, the fonts based on 18th century English penmanship, shout "I am English!"
Don

Well, it is true that a special version of Times Roman was made for German in which the upper-case letters were reduced slightly in stroke width.

As for France, my strongest impressions are Pays de Didot and the prevalance of thick and thin sans fonts compared to the Anglosphere. Also, the loose free-form designs Art Nouveau had perhaps wider adoption for French fonts than in most countries. The somewhat similar, but not quite as loose, Jugendstil had influence in Germany and Austria, but my impression is that it was not as strong as Art Nouveau in France. Anyway, it's difficult to see how much credibility can be given to on the fly comments like this.
Don

Simon Garfield's book Just My Type: A Book About Fonts (Profile, 2010) has a chapter entitled: "Can a font be German, or Jewish?" and another entitled "What is it about the Swiss?"

Thanks for the reminder. Some nuggets from pp. 187-188:
GarfieldJustMyTypeP187@90pct_4328.jpg">
There is quite a bit more.
Don

Another short excerpt, from p. 193:
GarfieldJustMyTypeP193@90pct_5406.jpg">
Don

On this topic, you may want to poke around the website from the exhibition some of my students and I assembled years ago: Face the Nation: How National Identity Shaped Modern Typeface Design, 1900-1960.