[KBI]∎ PDF The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead Heinrich Böll Leila Vennewitz 9780070064256 Books

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead Heinrich Böll Leila Vennewitz 9780070064256 Books

Download As PDF : The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead Heinrich Böll Leila Vennewitz 9780070064256 Books

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead Heinrich Böll Leila Vennewitz 9780070064256 Books

I know that on the surface this book has some basis in West German attitudes and politics in the time of the pre-1989 divided Germany. And all of the web literature that someone read to me talks mainly about this historical foundation.

But, for me, this book was reminiscent of The Stranger by Albert Camus. In the case of Katharina Blum, we have a character who is extremely normal on the surface - hardworking, law abiding, self-supporting. But her main feature is her self-integrity and her obedience to her own rules of life, as in the assistance she provides to a person sought by the police. After all, she has hitherto been highly successful in marching to her own drummer. Thus, she seems to me to be a "unique" hidden behind the veils of seeming conformity. Indeed, even her conformity is her conscious choice. In the last analysis, she is self-regulated and not societally regulated.

This is apparent in her interviews with the police in which she chooses to alienate herself rather than to continue to conform as a good citizen. It is certainly true in respect to the "free press" which takes the form of sensationalistic tabloid in this book. The intrusion of society into her integrity, whether in the form of authority or in the form of a "treasured value" (i.e., the press), leads Katharina Blum to do something that is universally recognized as anti-societal and then to return to the rules of society. I wonder what might be her future beyond the ending of this book.

This is really worth reading.


Tags : The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead [Heinrich Böll, Leila Vennewitz.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 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,Heinrich Böll, Leila Vennewitz.,The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead,McGraw-Hill,0070064253

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead Heinrich Böll Leila Vennewitz 9780070064256 Books Reviews

An interesting fast read, but the translation from German left a choppy incomplete picture of some of the main antagonists in the story. It made a good selection for a book club, but the two movies made from it helped define the characters. I doubt if I will read any of his books again. MP
Interesting story. I will see the movie when it comes down in price.
As always, excellent.
Book is greatly written. The way the author depicts the story one can easily imagine the scenes... long, long sentences that sounds as someone is talking to you. It is a convoluted story, many angles, many names to keep straight.. in the end? not that great of a story, nevertheless... not too bad..
It's just not a very good book. The "police report documentation" style is a huge turn off. The characters never receive the intimate development they deserve, which leaves the reader at a distance from what is happening and ends up making the story exceedingly hard to follow or relate to. I wanted to abandon this thing probably no more than 10 pages in but, as this was a school related read, I had to keep trucking through. It's only 100 pages long, but it seemed to take forever to get through.
An excellent book in a good translation. Generally superior to either the American or the German film. Recommended.
Heinrich Boll (d. 1985) was one of the three greatest German novelists (along with Gunter Grass and W.G. Sebald) of the latter half of the 20th Century. This novella was initially published in serialized form in "Der Spiegel" in 1974. Boll wrote it midst public controversy in Germany over the reporting of political violence by a large-circulation newspaper, which Boll felt unduly transgressed the rights of individuals in a liberal democracy.

Katharina Blum is an attractive young woman with a strong sense of honor trying to make a living, independently, in the restaurant/catering field and taking care of the homes of affluent professionals. She is the epitome of the capitalistic ethic, a young woman from a working-class background attempting to secure for herself a comfortable petty bourgeois existence. By happenstance, she ends up entertaining, as a romantic interest, a fugitive who, unbeknownst to her, is suspected (wrongly) of terroristic activities. She is ensnared in the investigation, and then spotlighted and hounded by the large-circulation newspaper (the "News"). The newspaper cloaks itself in the familiar homilies of a free press, but in actuality it wallows in the gutter of yellow journalism, and by the end of the novella it has sullied Katharina Blum, indirectly killed her aged and ill mother, damaged the lives of several unassuming friends of hers, and precipitated other unforeseen violence.

In addition to its critique of sensationalistic, irresponsible journalism, THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM also attacks the media's intrusion on individual privacy. Other themes or issues are wire-tapping, sexual harassment of attractive and socially vulnerable young women, the undue influence of the wealthy and connected, the hair-trigger readiness to accuse or tar someone as a communist, and Germany's repression of anything relating to Nazism.

Boll writes the novella as an after-the-fact account or report (although it is not presented in chronological order). The style is rather dry and almost dead-pan at times, and Boll takes pains to carefully parse words and meanings and to be meticulous in word choice, in marked contrast to the reporting of the "News." The account is compelling; despite some stylistic quirks, the book quickly draws in the reader and is difficult to drop until finished. THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM is not great literature, but it is literature with a social conscience, it transcends the particular circumstances that prompted its initial publication, and its heroine is an especially memorable one.
I know that on the surface this book has some basis in West German attitudes and politics in the time of the pre-1989 divided Germany. And all of the web literature that someone read to me talks mainly about this historical foundation.

But, for me, this book was reminiscent of The Stranger by Albert Camus. In the case of Katharina Blum, we have a character who is extremely normal on the surface - hardworking, law abiding, self-supporting. But her main feature is her self-integrity and her obedience to her own rules of life, as in the assistance she provides to a person sought by the police. After all, she has hitherto been highly successful in marching to her own drummer. Thus, she seems to me to be a "unique" hidden behind the veils of seeming conformity. Indeed, even her conformity is her conscious choice. In the last analysis, she is self-regulated and not societally regulated.

This is apparent in her interviews with the police in which she chooses to alienate herself rather than to continue to conform as a good citizen. It is certainly true in respect to the "free press" which takes the form of sensationalistic tabloid in this book. The intrusion of society into her integrity, whether in the form of authority or in the form of a "treasured value" (i.e., the press), leads Katharina Blum to do something that is universally recognized as anti-societal and then to return to the rules of society. I wonder what might be her future beyond the ending of this book.

This is really worth reading.