Raccoons are loved by some, despised by others. Some feed them nearby their homes and others keep weapons ready at their disposal. But in Germany they hold a reputation that exceeds any. Labelled as “bandits,” due to the distinctive black strip across their eyes, they regularly make headlines for breaking into hospitals, zoos, power plants and even homes, leaving little trails of destruction behind. Their arrival in the country holds a myth that has gone on for years. The urban legend goes that they were introduced to the country by Nazi commander and war criminal Hermann Göring. Yet archival research and modern ecological studies now tell a different story.
How did raccoons arrive in Germany?
An application was made to the Prussian hunting office to release two pairs of North American raccoons near the Edersee
Germany’s raccoons were long rumoured to have a dark past, beginning in the area near the city of Kassel in central Germany. “It was a common narrative among tourist guides, local politicians and larger parts of the population that Hermann Göring himself ordered the release of the raccoons in the wild,” said Eberhard Leicht, the former head of the Vöhl Forestry Office in central Germany to the BBC. “Some people even believed Göring had personally attended the process.”While local forestry officials cast doubt on these stories, the view spread far and wide. Leicht set out, using archival research, to see what really happened. He found that an application was indeed made to the Prussian hunting office to release two pairs of North American raccoons near the Edersee, a reservoir near the city of Kassel, to “enrich the fauna”. The application was made during the time that Göring was in charge of forestry and hunting, but Leicht found no sign that Göring had been personally involved. “There is no indication anywhere that politicians – such as Göring, as a member of the Nazi Reich government – had any influence on the decision,” said Leicht. “The file clearly shows that the entire process was merely an administrative matter.”In the end, Leicht’s archival research showed that the raccoons were let loose before an application was signed. One morning in April 1934, the records show, the animals were released from two crates to the south side of Lake Edersee near Vöhl, around 50km (30 miles) to the south-west of Kassel. This population grew and grew. Today, Kassel is called the “raccoon capital of Europe” with an estimated urban population of around 30,000 of them.
Raccoons on the loose
While the Lake Edersee raccoons were the first to take steps in the wild in Europe, more soon followed. When Alain Frantz, zoology curator at the Luxembourg Museum of Natural History, began researching raccoons in 2011, he was already aware of another release, believed to have occurred in the dying days of the Third Reich, when Allied bombers hit a Brandenburg fur farm.The expert wanted to understand if today’s population really sprang from just those two small starter populations. Such a small group could lead to severe genetic abnormalities due to inbreeding. By sampling the DNA of more than 400 raccoons across Germany, Frantz found evidence of two further significant releases, leading to populations with different gene pools in eastern Saxony, near the Czech border, and in the Harz Mountains, in northern Germany.The German population is known to have spread across borders, with documented crossings into the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. In Central Europe, the population had grown 300% between the 1990s and 2018, expanding into new territory in cities and forests. They have been found as far afield as Spain, Sweden and Greece. There have also been ongoing escapes from captivity across Europe, including from an Italian zoo in the early 2000s.
Threatening human lives?
According to a report by Deutsche Welle, they helped themselves to mulled wine sold at German Christmas markets
Well, raccoons are not the ones to lounge all day long. They like the action that comes with being small and agile. According to a report by Deutsche Welle, they helped themselves to mulled wine sold at German Christmas markets, leaving one animal staggering around the city of Erfurt “obviously intoxicated.”Moreover, raccoons have a habit of establishing communal toilets where “all of them, more or less, go in the same place,” said Arne Jernelov, a UN expert on environmental catastrophes, who has written on the long-term impacts of invasive species to the outlet. “And that, of course, is not very nice if it happens to be the attic of your house.”As their population has climbed to two million in Germany, they have been claimed responsible for thousands of Euros of property damage.While they may have caused destruction in the cities, it does not mean they are a disaster for wildlife too. As far as harming native species goes, raccoons are being framed for a crime there’s little evidence they have committed, said Michler, who has led a decade-long research project in Müritz National Park, the largest and longest European field study of its kind. “We always need someone who’s responsible for all the evil in the world,” she said. “There are a lot of silly stories going on here in Germany about raccoons – and not enough real research behind it. That’s a big problem.”However, their ecological impact needs to be studied. Raccoons’ ability to climb and swim means that they can get almost anywhere. In the US, where they are native, growing raccoon numbers in certain areas have been linked to declining numbers of songbirds. In Europe, studies have indicated that raccoons eat waterbird eggs, and rare European pond turtles. They can also carry parasites that can harm humans.In Germany, most states allow raccoons to be hunted year-round, and the number killed has quadrupled since 2005, to more than a quarter of a million. Torsten Reinwald, spokesman for the German Hunting Association, said that some scientific studies contradict the Müritz National Park research and find negative impacts on native biodiversity. Reinwald pointed to research from the Goethe University Frankfurt, which found that raccoons eat amphibians and their eggs.As of now, raccoons are here to stay in Germany. Their overall population continues to increase and the mammals keep on making their way into new territories.
