The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

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The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum or How Violence Can Develop and Where It Can Lead (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum or 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 "only" emptied a safe and deserted. 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.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

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

The story then backtracks to the time when Katharina met Götten at a friend's party, to how she spent the night with him and how on the next morning, the police break into her house, arrest her and then rudely interrogate her. We learn that Götten is a police suspect and that she has helped him to escape from the police. Her story is quickly picked up by the local tabloid, the ZEITUNG, which sends a particularly dedicated journalist, Tötges, to investigate the story. Tötges investigates everything about her life, calling on all of 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 decides the only reasonable thing to do is to get her story out. She agrees to give an interview to Tötges, believing it will clear everything up. But the story Tötges publishes is anything but what they talked about. Instead it talks about how "cold and calculating" she is and begins to cast suspicions on her father and brother. Katharina then decides she needs to know what kind of man Tötges really is, that he could so callously destroy her life. She only wants to look upon him, though she admits to taking a gun with her. She goes to the paper's headquarters and waits for him, but he never shows, and after two hours she goes home.

But Tötges follows her home, rings her doorbell and forces himself in and calls her "Blümchen" and "Blümelein" (patronising forms of her last name). He wonders why she looks so startled. He then proposes they "bumsen", a vulgar term for sex, roughly meaning "to bang". And Katharina thinks, "Bang? Why not?" lifts her gun out of her handbag and shoots him.

She then wanders the city for a few hours before driving to police headquarters and confessing to Moeding.

[edit] List of Characters

[edit] 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 magazine journalist.
  • Erwin Beizmenne - Detective Chief Kommissar in charge of the criminal procedure.
  • Walter Möding - Kommissar Beizmennes's assistant.

[edit] Minor characters

  • Peter Blum - Katharina's father, a construction worker 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.

[edit] Film

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

[edit] References

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.