The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
Knowing about the writer of a literary text can shape significantly the way that it is read. Consider the effect of the writer’s context on your understanding of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum.
“As a writer of fiction Böll was interpreting history, creating patterns of meaning, ordering his material to enable his reader to make sense of it.” The experiences of Böll and his values that arose from these events have been influential on the content and themes of Böll’s novel, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Böll experienced both the first and second world wars and the effects that these wars had on German society. Events such as the economic collapse in Germany post WWII, the construction of the Berlin Wall, the rise of student based urban terrorism in West Germany in the 1970’s and the increasing state controls to contain such alleged threats can be seen to influence the issues explored in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. The novel is a comment on the press and the law, the labyrinth of social truth, the collision of fact and fiction and the power of language. Böll himself experienced the press first hand and this along with the experiences of Professor Bruckner, form the basis of his criticism directed at the powerful and hegemonic structures in society, in particular in relation to the police and the press and their corrupt relationship in the novella. Many of Heinrich Böll s views and attitudes, resulting form his context, are clearly visible in the novella through the portrayal of certain characters in positive or negative lights. The historical, social, economic and political context of Böll and West Germany at this time (1900’s) had a considerable effect on the issues Böll delves into in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum and greatly affected my understanding of the novel.
Germany has a deeply rooted history with fascism in the form of Nazism in WWII (1939-1945). Böll was a teenager at the time of Hitler’s rise to power and he despised Hitler and everything that he stood for. “I hate the war and all those who love it”. Böll actively refused to join Hitler’s Youth as a boy, yet as a young man he was forced to join Hitler’s army. After the war, until the German Republic was formed, Böll lived under the Allied Occupation. These events led Böll to view politics with doubt and skepticism and he became vehement abo...
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... context that shaped Heinrich Böll, it becomes apparent to the reader that these conditions have greatly shaped the themes and ideas discussed in Böll’s, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Main issues such as the corruption and collusion of powerful institutions in society, especially the police, press and industrialists have come through, with emphasis being placed on the misogynistic and patriarchal society and the effects this has on the treatment of woman, shown by Katharina. Böll brings his awareness of they way in which power and status are connected to wealth into the text and greatly condemns the abuse of power by the dominant groups in society, “Böll had little faith in any moral renewal coming from political or ecclesiastical hierarchies.” . Böll believed that “the function of literature is to challenge the arrogant claims to totality made by all ideological systems” . By incorporating his own context into his work, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Böll leads the reader to a greater understanding of this time period in West Germany, at the same time undermining the dominant systems and causing the reader to question and carefully examine power structures in society.
Perhaps one of the most haunting and compelling parts of Sanders-Brahms’ film Germany Pale Mother (1979) is the nearly twenty minute long telling of The Robber Bridegroom. The structual purpose of the sequence is a bridge between the marriage of Lene and Hans, who battles at the war’s front, and the decline of the marriage during the post-war period. Symbolically the fairy tale, called the “mad monstrosity in the middle of the film,” by Sanders Brahms (Kaes, 149), offers a diagetic forum for with which to deal with the crimes of Nazi Germany, as well a internally fictional parallel of Lene’s marriage.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.
In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger, an orphaned little girl living in Nazi Germany, evolves partly through her numerous literary thefts. At her younger brother’s gravesite, she steals her first book, The Grave Digger’s Handbook, which teaches her not only the method to physically bury her brother, but also lets her emotionally bury him and move on. The theft of her next book, The Shoulder Shrug, from a book burning marks the start of Liesel’s awareness and resistance to the Nazi regime. As a story with a Jewish protagonist “who [is] tired of letting life pass him by – what he refer[s] to as the shrugging of the shoulders to the problems and pleasures of a person’s time on earth,” this novel prepares her both for resisting the
Hagen W (2012). ‘German History in Modern Times: Four Lives of the Nation’. Published by Cambridge University Press (13 Feb 2012)
By reading Night, the book and Elie Wiesel’s personal experiences lead people to explore more into modern oppression and segregation. Night is a book that continually educates the world about the repulsion and revulsion of the concentration camps. By sharing Elie’s knowledge with the world, Night and Elie’s teachings make sure that history does not repeat itself. Night also inspires mankind with its tales of uplifting perseverance. Finally, Night serves to remind us of what has happened and also to show us that we must not let it happen again. Wiesel’s speeches and book recap the horrors of Nazi Germany and also prompts us to look deeper into modern-day similarities such as the Civil War in Darfur. Night and Wiesel’s teachings are very relevant to real life because of the modern values and historic reminiscence that they hold.
De Wolfe writes an unbiased reflection of the past through the words of historians using social history, while the other two stories take a very different approach. The two stories included in part two of De Wolfe’s book produce biased views of the experience faced by Berngera Caswell as they were written as sensational novels. Although the approaches are on different ends of the spectrum, all three texts provide the reader with the sense that during this time period working women put themselves in unsafe position and should just stay home. Without De Wolfe’s recap of Caswell’s death along with the historical context one would not be able to understand the full effect that society
The activity of understanding Alice Williamson's diary begins prior to reading the first word. The reader begins to identify part of the reading experience based upon their feelings on diaries themselves in the moments of suspension between knowledge of type of text and the reading of the first entry.
German citizens had to endure a challenging lifestyle, presented by Adolf Hitler, of fascism, the holocaust, Jewish laws and propaganda during World War II. From 1939-1942, Nazi Germany affected the lives of Jews, Gypsies, Slavic people, and other groups living in Germany by getting rid of the undesirables, known as the Holocaust. Only Germans with the look of blond hair and blue eyes were even considered to live, only if he or she had no defects or disabilities, anyone else was sent to and killed in concentration camps. The Book Thief takes place in a town near Munich, Germany during this time of the holocaust. The novel focuses on the lives of the people and how they cope and deal with the immediate effects of WWII. It emphasizes the danger of hiding a Jew in a family’s basement, and how they are constantly paranoid of being caught.
Ishmael tells the narrator about Walter Sokolow’s obsession with Hitler and how Hitler held every German’s attention by telling them a story about Aryan power. Ishmael feels...
In his most famous novel Goodbye to Berlin, British writer Christopher Isherwood is exploring different characters living in Germany (esspecialy Berlin) in the times of Nazi rising. However, his novel is not about politics. It is about ordinary people with ordinary troubles and thoughts. However, the reader can find various remarks on politics and political opinions. The aim of this essay is to find and explore expressions of political atmosphere, manily in portrayals of the characters.
Gluckel's memoir enables a reader to gain an understanding of what a widowed Jewish woman would face in Christian dominated Germany both from a personal and public perspective throughout seventeenth and eighteenth century. Throughout her memoirs Gluckel describes the worries that a mother would have over her children, her relations with both her first and second husband while addressing the responsibilities she faced as a businesswoman. Gluckel arranged her life narrative in seven books. The first four books and the opening section of the fifth book have been written consecutively in the months or year of mourning after Haim's (her first husbands) death in 1689. The rest of Book 5 was written during the decade of the 1690's but given final form after her second marriage. The sixth book was written in 1702 or shortly afterward, during the initial shock of Hirsch Levy's (Gluckel's second husbands) bankruptcy in Metz, and the seventh and final book was composed in 1715, during her second widowhood, with a final paragraph from 1719 before her death. Gluckel has conveniently broken down her narratives in seven books, which help the reader clearly identify with individual aspects occurring in her life. In her memoirs Gluckel thoroughly encompasses a social, cultural and economical perspective about her life as a Jewish woman while contrasting it to Christian ways which dominated Germany during both 17th and 18th century.
Readers often find themselves trying to correlate the works they read to their respective authors, even when those works are fictitious. The need to find a human connection pushes readers to draw conclusions on who the author is based on their stories. Catherine Bush believes that this “autobiographical reading” takes away from the experience of the book and puts the author in a box they don't belong in. It is wrong to assume that the author has a direct personal link to their fictional creation, unless indicated by the author themself. It makes sense though to assume the story does reveal their ideologies and viewpoints. This is seen in Margaret Atwood’s works Murder in the Dark and The Handmaid’s tale, in both works there are messages to be found that
“In my estimation a good book first must contain little or no trace of the author unless the author himself is a character. That is, when I read the book I should not feel that someone is telling me the story but t...
Fascism was the type of totalitarian government that Adolph Hitler accepted in Germany. Fascism is a post democratic political system meaning that the country had to experience democracy to learn the importance of popular support. People had to agree to irrational ideas and Hitler accomplished much of this through emotional appeal. Another huge aspect of fascism was nationalism due to the emotional motivation behind passion for one’s country. Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were believers of fascism. Mussolini said that fascism was not just a political philosophy, but it was also a conception of life. G. W. F. Hegel was a large influence to Mussolini’s beliefs because of his certainty that fascism raised individual to higher levels. Hitler also heavily agreed that fascism would expose the German peoples’ greatness. This particular time in history for the Germans was a perfect time for fascism to emerge. Everyone wanted to feel like they belonged and the fascism party would do just that. Hitler acted as if he was saving Germany from the tragic situation they were experiencing and the emotion behind nationalism captured the attention of