Schlöndorff (and the New German Cinema movement as a whole) had his first financial hit film with "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" (1975). Based on the novel by Heinrich Böll, Schlöndorff both co-wrote and co-directed the film with Margarethe von Trotta, who made her directorial debut. The film stars Angela Winkler as Blum, who after falling in love and spending the night with a young army deserter becomes the victim of a corrupt police investigation and predatory tabloid newspaper, which cast her as both a terrorist and a prostitute. The newspaper is based upon the real right-wing German tabloid "Bild-Zeitung", whose publisher Axel Springer was the inspiration for the character Werner Tötges.