How the killing of one cantankerous catfish is dividing Germany

Times

08-07-2025

For the past three weeks, the German public has been gripped by a saga featuting more twists than a bag of pretzels.
It is not the looming return of conscription, the intra-coalition dispute over the electricity tax or a rebellion in the ranks of the Social Democratic party (SPD) but the execution of a giant cantankerous catfish, apparently with a police service pistol.
By now, the basic facts of the case are well established. In the middle of June a Wels catfish, roughly two metres long and weighing a little more than 90kg (14st 2lb), started attacking bathers who ventured too close to a diving platform in Lake Brombach, a reservoir in northern Bavaria.
It inflicted mild to moderate bite wounds on five people before the local police force was called in. Reasoning that it would be impractical to close the surrounding area to swimmers and fretting that the belligerent siluriform's next victim might panic and drown, officers decided to neutralise it.
One of them shot the catfish three times with a regulation-issue handgun before a group of anglers helped lug it to shore. That might have been the end of the story had the force not decided to issue a press release together with a photograph of the officers posing next to the body.
The killing soon went viral. The German branch of the animal rights organisation Peta announced that it was lodging criminal charges over the 'extremely painful, slow and above all unnecessary and illegal death of the catfish'.
Ichthyologists — fish scientists — suggested it had probably been trying to protect its eggs during spawning season and that it might have been further agitated by an electronic music festival taking place near by.
Days later, it transpired that the policeman had not managed to kill the catfish as none of the three bullets had penetrated its skin. Instead, they had probably stunned the fish and it was the fishermen who had administered the coup de grâce some 40 minutes later.
Internet users turned out hundreds of memes commemorating the incident. One wrote a parody of a sentimental hit by the rock star Herbert Grönemeyer; another mocked up a pastiche of the film poster for Jaws.
Others suggested the fish had been the German version of Harambe, a silverback gorilla that was shot dead at Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 after it grabbed a four-year-old boy who had fallen into its enclosure.
Der Postillon, the country's most popular satirical magazine, published at least five articles inserting the fish into various political and diplomatic incidents, such as President Trump's promise to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine within 24 hours.
Columnists at the more serious end of the German press sought a deeper meaning in the shooting. Was the catfish a victim of climate change? Was it a parable of humanity's brutal relationship with the natural world?
Or was it, as one essayist suggested in the newspaper Die Zeit, a 'cautionary political tale with a Shakespearean quality', comparable to Hamlet, Macbeth and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan?
Others had more practical matters on their mind. The catfish was taken to the Gasthoff zum Goldenen Lamm restaurant in nearby Wettelsheim, chopped into 120 fillets and served with herby potatoes, wild garlic sauce and a medley of summer vegetables for €22.50 per plate.
The owner said people had travelled from as far afield as Munich, about two hours away, for a taste of its 'delicious and tender' flesh.
Yet that was not the end of the story. Last week, in what can only be construed as an act of solidarity, another catfish in the same reservoir attacked a bather. The latest crisis of German political life continues.