English Sl Paper Katharina Blum

The beginnings of Katharina Blum go back to the winter of 1971/72 and its atmosphere of conservative backlash. Professor Peter Brückner of the Technische Hochschule Hannover was falsely accused of hiding members of the Baader-Meinhof Group. He was slandered by the Bild-Zeitung and subsequently suspended from the university. Böll himself was targeted by this newspaper when he published an article in Der Spiegel in January 1972 entitled "Will Ulrike Meinhof Gnade oder freies Geleit?" ["Does Ulrike Meinhof Want Pardon or Free Conduct?"] that demanded justice for Ulrike Meinhof, and that she be accorded democratic rights and protection against misleading insinuations and false accusations. In return, Böll was denounced as a terrorist sympathizer who condoned violence against FRG citizens. He himself became a victim of surveillance when his summer house in Langenbroich/Eifel near Cologne was surrounded by police and ransacked in June 1972. He was under suspicion of hiding Ulrike Meinhof, and was even deemed a Verfassungsfeind (enemy of the constitution). In fact, he acted as a Verfassungsfreund (friend of the constitution), since he publicly decried the right-wing gutter press together with the West German police for their blatant disrespect for human dignity, guaranteed in the FRG Constitution. Their complicity became evident when the police allowed press photographers to take humiliating pictures of Andreas Baader, who was naked while being arrested. Furthermore, in 1974 the Springer Press published the news that the flat of Böll's son in Berlin had been searched – before the search actually took place.

Despite, or rather because of, the malicious smear campaign, Böll did not shy away from further outspoken condemnation of the Springer Press. The novel's parody of traditional disclaimers – "Should the description of certain journalistic practices result in the resemblance to the practices of the Bild-Zeitung, such resemblance is neither intentional nor fortuitous, but unavoidable" – explicitly reveals that the primary target of Katharina Blum is the ruthless, destructive reporting of the Bild-Zeitung. Among those practices are the harassment of potential witnesses and the deliberate manipulation of language. For example, in Katharina Blum the News quotes as a character witness Katharina Blum's former employer who supposedly said: "In every respect a very radical person who cleverly succeeded in deceiving us". In truth, the retired teacher of Classical Languages had made the following statement: "If Katharina is a radical, then she is radical in her helpfulness, her organizing ability, and her intelligence" (Heinrich Böll: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. Translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz. McGraw-Hill Book Company: New York 1976, p. 43). The author of this falsification is the journalist Tötges. His name alludes to the German verb töten (to kill), and