Letting a user search a Wordpress site from the frontend

Question

I'm new to wordpress and trying to build a site where the user can search for keywords from the frontend. I've followed the instruction on how to do this in the WP codex (https://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_a_Search_Page), and I've written a page template for a search page. I uploaded this as a page template and created a page with this template, but when I call up the page, it is empty.

This is the code of the page template:

<?php
/*Template Name: Search Page
*/
?>
<?php

 <?php
global $query_string;

$query_args = explode("&", $query_string);
$search_query = array();

foreach($query_args as $key => $string) {
    $query_split = explode("=", $string);
    $search_query[$query_split[0]] = urldecode($query_split[1]);
} 

$search = new WP_Query($search_query);
?>
<?php
global $wp_query;
$total_results = $wp_query->found_posts;
?>

get_header();
if ($nirvana_frontpage=="Enable" && is_front_page() && 'posts' == get_option('show_on_front' )): get_template_part( 'frontpage' );
else :
?>
    <section id="container" class="<?php echo nirvana_get_layout_class(); ?>">

        <div id="content" role="main">
            <h2>Suchen</h2>     
            <?php get_search_form(); ?> 

        </div><!-- #content -->
        <?php nirvana_get_sidebar(); ?>
    </section><!-- #container -->

<?php
endif;
get_footer();
?>
}

What am I doing wrong? I know this is a very basic question, but maybe that's why nobody else seems to have this problem...