SOURCE: "Katharina Blum: Violence and the Exploitation of Sexuality," in Women in German Yearbook, Vol. 4, 1988, pp. 83-95.

In the following essay, Armster examines the issue of sexual exploitation in Die verlorene Ehre her Katharina Blum.

In 1974, Heinrich Böll's then recent novel Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum was serialized in the West German magazine Der Spiegel. The appearance of the novel in the news magazine was notable, as it marked the first time that Spiegel published a literary work in its entirety. The novel's literary merit was not, however, the reason the editors chose to make an exception to their usual policies regarding what they print. Instead, BÖll's short novel was viewed as having actual news value in that it possessed a direct tie to immediate political events in Germany. In Spiegel's own words: "Eine denkwürdige publizistische Affäre—BÖlls Kontroverse mit 'Bild' über...