arkhaine's Full Review: Heinrich Boll - The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: ...
What happens when an innocent person becomes tangled within the oily arms of the media and accused of horrible acts she did not commit? What happens when the story becomes more important than the person? What happens when tabloid journalism runs amuck, tainting police investigation and the integrity of an ordinary human being? What happens when innocent until proven guilty isn't remotely taken seriously? Nobel Laureate Heinrich Böll presents these questions in the form of an extended police report, filling the slim volume of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum with observations, detailed recollections of interviews, letters, and recordings of Katharina's interrogation after she is accused of harbouring a criminal in her home, and allowing him to escape from the police.
The novel is a startling examination of how easily a life can be changed when the police, and more importantly the media, are allowed to run rampant. For Böll, writing in the 1970s in West Germany, the growing power of the media to shape views and cast judgement was worrying, particularly when coupled with a firm police presence. Katharina Blum, the protagonist of the story, is very much a victim of circumstances. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time – or, rather, she wasn't until the media made a bigger deal out of her predicament than they should, and the police began to sniff harder.
Katharina's life is presented to the reader in outline form as part of the police reports. We learn that she is a methodical woman, something of a prude (she divorced her husband for wanting to have intercourse with her), an excellent saver and rather quiet and polite. She comes from a somewhat troubled family, but not enough that it affects her greatly. There are a few discrepancies in her biography, but these could, and are, easily explained away by Katharina's refusal to delve too deeply into her intimate relationships. The crime, we learn from the police, is that she assisted Ludwig Götten, a wanted man, with his escape from her home. The crime, we learn from the media, was conspiracy, loose-living, possible prostitution, and more. Böll cleverly juxtaposes the calm, reasoned and rational approach of the police in their interrogation, with the increasingly frenzied declarations of the News, Katharina's favourite newspaper. Unfortunately, the police are soon swayed by the media's accusations and begin to believe that Katharina might have a greater hand in Götten's criminal activities.
What is Katharina to do? We are rarely allowed the luxury of listening in on her thoughts or hearing her point of view. The few times we are able to learn of events from her direct words are in statements taken verbatim. Thus, she is something of a mystery to us as much to the police. Small chapters are devoted to comments from her friends and acquaintances, with sections later in the novel highlighting the manner in which the media can turn an innocent comment into something horrible. Berthold Hiepertz, a colleague, told a reporter that 'If Katharina is a radical, then she is radical in her helpfulness, her organizing ability, and her intelligence – or I am very much mistaken in her, and I have had forty years' experience as a teacher and have seldom been deceived'. His comment is twisted until it is printed as, '[Katharina is] in every respect a very radical person who cleverly succeeded in deceiving us.' Hiepertz knows the truth, and Blum, and the police when they ask Hiepertz for clarification, but would you? Would I, reading the newspaper in the morning? No – and therein lies the heart of Böll's work. Truth is what we are told, and it is impossible for a single individual to verify every claim made by the media. We must trust and, given that a good story is better than a boring story, sometimes circumstances are inflated, or conflated, or given greater importance than their due.
The decade in which a novel is written can often indicate its impact and importance to later generations. Böll, writing in the 1970s, in relatively sober Germany, can be considered to have written something of a prophetic work in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Today, we all but expect that the media will distort a story in some way – the skill is in finding out which direction, and adjusting accordingly. Katharina, driven to hopelessness by the smear campaign against her, does in the end commit a crime – she murders a reporter, Werner Tötges, and admits that she would have liked to kill another reporter who turns up dead a few days later. These are no mere plot points or shocks at the end of the work – they are telegraphed boldly by page nine, with Böll attempting to discover the series of events that led up to the murders. Katharina's choice of murder is wrong, yes, and presented as such, but who can blame her? By the end of the novella she is socially extinct, her reputation shredded, her business in ruins. She has been killed in every way but physically, so she retaliates in kind.
Böll's novella is short and well-focused. By choosing to present Katharina's story from the neutral perspective of a report, he is able to clinically examine each side of the argument and allow us, the reader, to find fault. Granted, there is method to all of this – we are supposed to be outraged at the treatment of Katharina, and find against the media – but the narrator does remain impartial. This impartiality actually allows for a great deal of humour, for the tone taken is very dry. But there is a brief moment of something that is quite horrific, and bears mentioning. Toward the end the media, running out of steam and anxious to find further leads, finishes an article by musing, “Can it be denied that our methods of interrogation are too mild? Are we to continue to treat with humanity those who commit inhuman acts?” The complaint the newspaper is making is that Katharina is silent where she should be speaking, withholding information where it should be public knowledge. But how quickly the media jumps to condoning something horrific, how rapidly the tone shifts to encouraging torture. Böll very wisely lets the comment stand on its own legs, without interpretation, rejection, or acceptance. But he shows us, in clear and stark detail, just how easily it is for a group of individuals – the newspaper companies – to accept horrible acts with potentially disastrous consequences for a functioning democracy. The pursuit of truth and justice should always remain within the tight boundaries of the law, no matter if those boundaries allow for the occasional criminal to slip through the cracks. The moral integrity of the nation – any nation, be it Germany, the United States with its Guantanamo Bay, or my own Australia – should never falter simply to catch a crook. But oh how easy it can be.
Nobel Prize winner Heinrich BAll s powerful novel about a woman terrorized by the media In an era in which journalists will stop at nothing to break a...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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