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 modeled on the actual German Bild-Zeitung.

The story is written from a third-person perspective.

Plot summary

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.

List of characters

Major characters

• Katharina Blum - A divorced housekeeper.
• Ludwig Götten - A suspected criminal on the run.
• Else Woltersheim - Katharina's godmother and friend, she throws a party on Weiberfastnacht ('Women's Carnival Night'), where Katharina and Ludwig meet.
• Werner Tötges - An invasive newspaper journalist. His surname is a play on the German word "tötgeschossen", meaning "shot dead".
• Erwin Beizmenne - Detective Chief Kommissar in charge of the criminal procedure.
• Walter Möding - Kommissar Beizmennes's assistant.

Minor characters

• Peter Blum - Katharina's father, a miner who died when Katharina was six years old.
• Maria Blum - Katharina's mother, who dies during the course of the story. Werner Tötges allegedly approaches her illegally after a serious surgery, although Maria Blum would have needed absolute calmness.
• Kurt Blum - Katharina's brother. He is in jail.
• Wilhelm Brettloh - A textile worker and Katharina's first husband. They were introduced by Katharina's brother.
• Dr. Kluthen - Katharina works as his housekeeper for a year.
• Trude Blorna and Dr. Hubert Blorna - The current employers of Katharina
  • Trude Blorna - An architect, she was known in her college years as "Red Trude" because of her hair, but the News implies that this nickname is due to extreme Communist views
  • Dr. Hubert Blorna - Trude's husband, successful attorney.
• Peter Hach - Attorney and friend of Hubert Blorna.
• Alois Sträubleder - Industrialist, a client of Hubert Blorna. He has a house in the country that Katharina uses to hide Götten.
• Lüding - another wealthy industrialist who is friend of Sträubleder
• Adolf Schönner - In the movie, he was shot after Tötges murder. In the book, Böll enumerates reasons for her not being the shooter.
• Konrad Beiters - Live-in partner of Else Woltersheim. Through him, Katharina obtains the gun she uses to shoot Tötges.

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.

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.