(DREYFUS AFFAIR)

Paris

1898

Issue of L’Aurore of January 13, 1898, whose famous headline reads: “J’Accuse…! Lettre au Président de la République, par Émile Zola” [I Accuse…! Letter to the President of the Republic, by Emil Zola]. * “Dreyfus est Innocent”. Supplement to “Le Siècle.” December, 1898. BroadsIde in black and red ink with 11 photographic illustrations of major defenders of Dreyfus

Kleeblatt, The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice (1987), p. 165 (plate 22); p. 211(plate 106)

“L’Affaire” as it was known, engaged the consciousness of the entire French nation, and indeed most of Europe, for over a decade from 1894, when Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was unjustly accused of treason, until he was finally rehabilitated in 1906. Emil Zola’s open letter to the President of the Republic, in which he accused the General Staff of the Army of crimes and complicity in a plot against Dreyfus, was instrumental in awaking the world to the injustice which had been committed. Zola was not alone in the defense of Dreyfus. Our broadside poster carries the photo likenesses of ten other individuals who rose to the defense of Dreyfus, sometimes at great risk to their respective careers. Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, who revealed to his superior officers his findings that the true cuplrit was a Major Esterhazy, whereas Dreyfus was totally innocent, was sent to prison and dismissed from the army. (He too was reinstated in 1906.) And then, of course, there was Georges Clémenceau (later Prime Minister), in whose newspaper, L’Aurore, Zola’s expose appeared, and who in fact, came up with the catchy title, “JAccuse.” See Kleeblatt, pp. XIV-XIX; EJ, Vol. VI, cols. 224-230; XVI, cols. 1216-7