Headline

In The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll tells the story of a woman who becomes a police suspect after hosting an accused criminal and is then smear campaigned in the press. This novella was published in 1974 in West Germany, against the backdrop of a media landscape that was abuzz with the hunt for alleged supporters of the far-left militant group RAF.

What does such a story tell us today? To newly explore Böll's novella and its historical context, I have assembled a writing group, consisting of activists and artists with different relations to smear campaigns in present-day Germany. The practice of collective writing and rewriting has spanned open a space: for encounter, experiments, debates and play. What results is an ongoing study into uses and abuses of language.

Leon Locher is a performance creator, performer and writer. In 2024, they graduated with a BA in Language Arts from the University of Applied Arts Vienna and subsequently started an MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Inter-University Center for Dance in Berlin, where they currently study. Their work focuses on the intersection between text, body and space. Works by and with them were presented at KUB Gallery in Leipzig, P14 Volksbühne in Berlin and the Angewandte Performance Lab in Vienna, among others.