The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, or: How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning German author Heinrich Böll. It was first published in 1974 in the Federal Republic of Germany (better known as West Germany). The novel is strongly influenced by the author's liberal pacifist views--Böll's family opposed the rise of Nazism, and as a boy, Böll himself refused to join the Hitler's Youth.
The novel comments on media sensationalism and the widespread panic/paranoia following the rise of the Red Army Faction, a far-left militant group considered a terrorist organization by the West German government and most of the Western media. The tabloid newspaper at the center of the novel, Die Zeitung (The Newspaper), is an allusion to the real conservative-nationalist German newspaper, Bild-Zeitung, which played a prominent role in discrediting the German left as well as the leftist German Student Movement of the late 1960s.
The novel received a film adaptation in 1975 by directors Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta. The film won the German Film Award for Best Cinematography, and lead actress Angela Winkler won the German Film Award for Best Overall Acting Performance.
In 1984, the novel was also made into a made-for-TV film in the United States, titled The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck. This film removed the story from its original historical context and transplanted into an American small town. The man with whom the titular character spends the night was depicted as a member of Weather Underground (the Weathermen), a radical left-wing domestic terrorist group whose ideology involved Black Power and opposition to the Vietnam War. The film was much less influential and well-received than its German counterpart.
