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Chapter 57
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Ethics in Journalism
Truth, Lies, and Narrative
Class, Hierarchy, and Exploitation
Dignity and Compassion
Summary
Analysis
Finally, the narrator claims, there is “something reasonably cheerful to report”: Katharina’s story from her own perspective, which she has recently told to Dr. Blorna. Katharina describes the night leading up to her murder of Tötges—the night she’d originally planned to meet with him for an interview. Katharina remembers how she took on some hours at a neighborhood bar frequented by journalists, bartending as she waited for Tötges to arrive. He didn’t show up, though, so eventually Katharina drove home and waited for him to ring her bell.
There is nothing “cheerful” about the content of Katharina’s story, which effectively summarizes the tragedy of her undoing. What is cheerful about it is that it allows Katharina to tell that tragedy from her own perspective. This at least allows her to reclaim some of her honor. Although her act of murdering Tötges is unquestionably wrong and illegal, hearing her account of the abuse and exploitation she suffered in the days leading up to the murder humanizes her and offers a logical explanation for why she did what she did.
Active
Themes
Katharina describes hearing the bell ring, announcing Tötges’s arrival. When she opened the door to find him waiting there, he looked smug. Calling her “Blumikins,” he asked if they might start the interview with “a bang,” and this is what pushed Katharina over the edge. If a bang is what Tötges wanted, she remembers thinking, then she’d surely give it to him. Katharina then shot Tötges four times. As he fell to the floor, she remembers, he looked incredibly shocked. After the murder, Katharina returned to the bar to work some more. Then she left without saying goodbye.
Tötges’s smugness suggests his feelings of superiority over Katharina, who is powerless to defend herself against the free press. For instance, though Katharina claims it was Tötges who cruelly and mockingly propositioned her for sex, in theory, there would’ve been nothing to stop Tötges from printing a story in the next day’s paper accusing Katharina of propositioning him—and given his success at destroying Katharina’s reputation, his readership would likely find that false version of events entirely credible. In a way, Katharina’s murder of Tötges was an act of self-defense—not against her life, but against her remaining “honor,” though it would never be seen this way in the eyes of the law.
Active
Themes
After leaving the bar, Katharina explains to Blorna, she went and sat in a church and thought about how miserable her life had become as of late. When she thought of Tötges dead in her apartment, she felt no remorse. Finally, she went to Moeding to turn herself in, remembering him as “the police officer who had been so nice to [her] before.”
Active
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