About the work
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is a 1974 novella by the German writer and later Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Its subtitle, How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead, points to Böll's own experience with tabloid press campaigns, which prompted the story.
Plot
The housekeeper Katharina Blum meets a man wanted by the police as a suspected terrorist at a carnival party and shelters him for one night. A sensationalist tabloid newspaper turns the episode into a smear campaign that systematically destroys her reputation, until she shoots the reporter responsible.
Cultural significance
With roughly 2.7 million copies sold, the novella ranks among Böll's most widely read works and is regarded as a sharp indictment of the sensationalist press of the 1970s; Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta filmed the story in 1975, and John von Düffel later wrote his own stage adaptation.