Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum 1975

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Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1975)
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Socio-political Background 1

• Recap
• FRG 1966 to 1972 characterised by political
  reform
• FRG 1972 to 1975 characterised by political
  repression, conservatism and irrationality.
• Due in part to the violence of the emergent
  Baader-Meinhof group (1970 ?)
• Climate of fear, distrust and paranoia which led,
  at times, to the average citizen identifying
  radicalism (i.e., socialism, Marxism) with
  terrorism.

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Socio-political Background 2

• The 1971 Berufsverbot (professional proscription)
• Attempt to bar progressives and reformers from
  the civil service / public sector jobs.
• This was seen as smacking of fascist measures, as
  was the increase in police surveillance and
  intrusion (expansion of state authority and power
  in this period). Creation of enemies of the
  state!

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Media

• Mass Media was central to this process of
  safeguarding society.
• Radicals and reformers dismissed by media
  institutions, thus bolstering the states
  position
• In particular, the Springer Press
• Bild
• Bild am Sonntag
• Die Welt
• Welt Kompakt
• Euro am Sonntag
• Welt am Sonntag
• Axel Springer

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The Springer Press

• Springer Press
• Great control over the popular press
• Led a vicious campaign against progressives and
  radicals (joined by other mass media
  organisations)
• Die Welt The Dream Dancers of West Berlin Why
  Always Strikes at the Free University? (late
  60s)
• Kommune I became the Horror Commune
• Stop the Terror of the Young Reds Now

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Katharina Blum

• Heinrich Böll
• Defended Ulrike-Meinhofs right to a fair trial
• Vicious defamatory campaign by Springer Press
• House raided by police privately harassed
• Concerned by the demagoguery of mass media
• Bölls fictive novel aimed to shed more light on
  reality than the medias supposed non-fiction
  reports.
• Takes particular care with choice of language
  (words as weapons) Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin
  sie führen kann.

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Katharina Blum

• The major weakness of Bölls novel lies in its
  strength the moralist focus on an exceptional
  case of political resistance. In other words, we
  are presented with a phenomenon that apparently
  has no connections to the manifold cases of
  political repression and the widespread political
  controls used by the state to prevent democratic
  self-organisation and open dissent in the 1970s.
  
• Jack Zipes, The Political Dimension of The Lost
  Honor of Katharina Blum, in New German Critique
  12 (1977) 75-84, here 79.

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Katharina Blum

• Schlöndorffs filmic adaptation
• Narrative subtlety goes out the window along with
  Katharinas honour!
• This is an attack on the everyday terrorism of
  institutions
• Schlöndorff employs the conventions of melodrama
  to tell the spectator how to think
• Clear cut good and bad, heroes and villains
• Hunter / victim motif immediately betrays
  Schlöndorffs political leanings.

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Katharina Blum

• We are encouraged to identify with Katharina
• The voyeuristic gaze in Katharinas apartment
• Scene analysis
• Erosion of her identity (destroys her flat)
• violence as the language of being without
  image, Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p.
  196.
• Criticism here too? Tüchtigkeit under attack?
• Beizmenne he is identified with the repressive
  force of state authority.

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Katharina Blum

• Reception
• The film defeats itself because the use of
  melodrama actually reproduces the patterns of
  domination and struggle.
• Is this true?

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Katharina Blum

• But melodrama at its most accomplished seems
  capable of reproducing more directly than other
  genres the patterns of domination and
  exploitation that exist in society
• i.e., the film plays the institutions that it
  seeks to criticise at their own game
• The other side of a one sided official public
  memory
• Doch wie der Boulevard-Journalismus, so ist auch
  dieses Melodrama äusserst wirkungsvoll. Anne
  Kuhn.