1914 not 1814. Sorry.
With all the knowledge I gathered in history class, I'm still not able to wrap my head around this.
Did they just straight up ignored the risk?
You mean 1914, right?
What is it that you do not grasp or what risk are you referring to?
I'll try to keep this condensed and if you have further question I can expand. The short of it is that German policy was thoroughly centered around:
Fear of a two front war
Fear of the mobilization "death clock", that is if someone mobilized and you did not you would be basically defenseless against an invasion
Their solution to this was forgoing diplomatic channels in crisis and going for the preemptive strike. This goes double considering they went into the July Crisis steering toward war.
So when the situation began to heat up it was mobilize first and knock out one of the two powers encircling it quickly or get overwhelmed and crushed. This meant rapid mobilization and wrecking the French in about 40 days, the perceived length it would take Russia to mobilize. This carried a preemptive first strike through a neutral country to bypass French forts and armies.
Turns out the plan, heavily modified by Moltke as it was, was not prepared to deal with the fact that the French weren't push overs. It was far more prepared however for the rapid Russian mobilization in the East though as it sent more men that way. So in a way it lost the "all in" nature of the original plan (forgoing the East, letting the French invade Bavaria and swinging on behind them and encircling) by rigid defending Bavaria and Prussia.
It's the difference between the "swinging door' and the "squeeze" philosophies of the plan. They kept the all in nature strategically (preemptive strike through Belgium) but forgoed actually throwing their entire army through Belgium. The ratio of men going through Belgium to men elsewhere was dropped from 7:1 to 3:1.
That said the Russians legitimately mobilized rapidly and that may have saved them from destruction otherwise. Further the swinging door plan also has the unfortunate effect of letting the French occupy Bavaria and West Prussia while also cutting the entire German army behind enemy lines. So it was rightfully abandoned.