Without spending a few minutes Googling with keyword phrases such as "Germanic naming conventions" "Germanic titles grammar" "Formal Germanic titles grammar" "German automobile documentation" etc. etc. I am GUESSING that this is a naming convention that, in essence, replaces the parenthesis, as in this example:
George (President) Bush
Bill (Rapist, Scumbag, Liar, National Embarrassment) Clinton
etc. (sorry about the second one, I couldn't resist). By doing things this way, the Deutsche equivalent of our Department of Motor Vehicles would be able to alphabetize everyone by name, yet retain evidence of a special title that is important to their identification. "Miss" , "Mister", etc. would not be the same sort of title as an honorary, elected or clerical title which would serve as a very specific identifier for a famous person. It would provide an additional means by which they could differentiate the then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger from the ten thousand (or more) other Josef Ratzingers in Germany.
Again, this is just a guess and German Freepers, Freeper Linguists with a Specialty in Germanic Languages, and Freepers Who Simply Know More Than The Stoat are of course welcome to add to this explanation or to debunk it entirely if that's appropriate :-)
I hope that this might be of some help.
Thanks, that was a good explanation.