The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum or: How violence develops and where it can lead
Original title	Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann
Translator	Leila Vennewitz
Genre(s)	Novel
Publication date	1974
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	0-14-004619-4
OCLC Number	59145306

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, or: how violence develops and where it can lead (original German title: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann) is a 1974 novel by Heinrich Böll.

The story deals with the sensationalism of tabloid news and the political climate of panic over Red Army Faction terrorism in the 1970s Federal Republic of Germany. The main character, Katharina Blum, is an innocent housekeeper whose life is ruined by an invasive tabloid reporter and a police investigation when the man with whom she has just fallen in love turns out to be wanted by the police because of a bank robbery. Later it turns out that he is not a bank robber: he is a deserter from the Army who had stolen money from his camp before deserting. Ultimately she shoots the reporter, after she invited him to her house for an interview. The book's fictional tabloid paper, Die Zeitung (The Newspaper), is modelled on the actual German Bild-Zeitung.

Plot

Four days after a Weiberfastnacht party, where Katharina met a man named Ludwig Götten, she calls on Oberkommissar Moeding and confesses to killing a journalist for the newspaper Die Zeitung.

Katharina had met Götten at a friend's party and spent the night with him before helping him to escape from the police. The next morning, the police broke into her house, arrested her and questioned her. The story is sensationally covered by Die Zeitung, and in particular its journalist Tötges. Tötges investigates everything about her life, calling on Katharina's friends and family, including her ex-husband and hospitalized mother, who dies the day after Tötges visits her. He paints a picture of Katharina as a fervent accomplice of Götten, and as a communist run amok in Germany.

Katharina arranges an interview with Tötges. According to Katharina, upon his arrival he suggests that they have sex, whereupon she shoots him dead. She then wanders the city for a few hours before driving to police headquarters and confessing to Moeding.

The book also details the effects of the case on Katharina's employers and friends the Blornas; Mr Blorna is her lawyer, and Mrs Blorna one of the designers of the apartment block where Katharina resides. Their association with Katharina leads to their exclusion from society.

Style

The story is written from a first-person plural perspective. That is, the narrator is, as it were, presenting a confidential report to the reader on the basis of sources. The technique is documentary, as with Group Portrait with Lady, but with a much more disciplined focus on essentials. The reader is sometimes left to infer who the sources are for many of the reports, and even to wonder whether the narrator may not be one of the characters in the novel. This technique avoids the use of character-zoning by an omniscient narrator who assumes the authority to enter the minds of his characters. Instead, the narrator is reduced to a dependency on characters and the information they impart. The narrator becomes a researcher and critic of his source material, and in this novel is implicitly contrasted with the journalists who irresponsibly distort their sources. The attack on vulgar journalism is thus mounted from the perspective of a narrator whose moral authority is enhanced by the use of the 'regal' first-person plural form.

Film

Main article: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (film)

• The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. A 1975 film adaptation of Böll's novel was directed by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. It starred Angela Winkler as Blum, Mario Adorf as Kommissar Beizmenne, Dieter Laser as Tötges, and Jürgen Prochnow as Ludwig.
• The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck. This 1984 TV movie starred Marlo Thomas as Blum and Kris Kristofferson as Ben Cole.

See also

• Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century

References

• Böll: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum ... ISBN 1-85290-017-2
• Böll: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum ... ISBN 3-462-03145-7 (Hardcover), ISBN 3-423-01150-5 (Paperback)
• Whose lost honour?: A study of the film adaptation ... ISBN 0-907409-03-2

Further publications

• Werner Bellmann: Heinrich Böll. Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum. In: Erzählungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Interpretationen. Bd. 2. Reclam, Stuttgart 1996. S. 183-204. ISBN 3-15-009463-1

• Werner Bellmann / Christine Hummel: Heinrich Böll, Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum. Erläuterungen und Dokumente. Reclam, Stuttgart 1999. ISBN 3-15-016011-1

• Werner Bellmann: Notizen zu Heinrich Bölls Erzählung "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum". In: Wirkendes Wort 54 (2004) No. 2. S. 165-170.

• Hanno Beth: Rufmord und Mord: die publizistische Dimension der Gewalt. Zu Heinrich Bölls Erzählung "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum". In: Hanno Beth (Ed.): Heinrich Böll. Eine Einführung in das Gesamtwerk in Einzelinterpretationen. 2., überarb. Aufl. Königstein (Ts.) 1980. S. 69-95.

• Klaus Jeziorkowski: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum. In: Werner Bellmann (Ed.): Heinrich Böll. Romane und Erzählungen. Interpretationen. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000. S. 249-267.

• Nigel Harris: "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum": the problem of violence. In: Michael Butler (Ed.): The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Böll. Social conscience and literary achievement. Cambridge 1994. S. 198-218.

• Eberhard Scheiffele: Kritische Sprachanalyse in Heinrich Bölls "Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum". In: Basis. Jahrbuch für deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur 9 (1979) S. 169-187 und 268f.