©2008 The Johns Hopkins University
The collection was purchased from Jean M. Goulemot, Paris, France, in November 2002.
Accesss to the collection is unrestricted.
Alfred Dreyfus Collection, MS 422
Special Collections,
Milton S. Eisenhower Library,
The Johns Hopkins University
Alfred Dreyfus was a French army officer who was accused of selling military secrets to the Germans. He was arrested on October 15, 1894, convicted on December 15, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. The legal proceedings were based on insufficient evidence, but public opinion, and the French press, largely anti-semitic at the time, regarded the verdict as an examplof of the supposed disloyalty of French Jews.
The Dreyfus affair split France in two between conservative and progressive forces. On January 13, 1898, the novelist Emile Zola wrote an open letter puslished on the front page of Aurore under the headline "J'Accuse," in which he accused the army of covering up its mistaken conviction of Dreyfus. Nationalists pressed to have Zola arrested; he was found guilty of libel and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and fined 3,000 francs. Zola fled to London and returned when Dreyfus's conviction was overturned.
More trials followed, but it was no tuntil 1899--and the fall of the government--that Alfred Dreyfus was finally declared completely innocent of all charges. He rejoined the French Army in 1906,a nd was recalled to active service during World War I as a lieutenant colonel. He died on July 12, 1935, in Paris.
This series contains issues of Le Petit Journal, supplement illustre, an anti-Dreyfus newspaper, with front and back page color drawings depicting events related to the Dreyfus trial. Fernand Labori, attorney for Zola and other Dreyfus supporters, won a libel suit against the editor, Ernest Judet, on August 3, 1898. It also contains three regular copies of Le Petit Journal, and one copy of the newspaper,
Arranged chronologically.
This series consists of political posters satirizing prominent supports of Dreyfus. The series was published in 1899 at the opening of the Paris World's Fair. Among those depicted in caricature are Louis Lepene, Emile Zola, Alfred Dreyfus, Georges Picquart, Georges Clémenceau, Henri Brisson, Fernand Labori, and Ludovis Travieux.
Arranged by print number.
This series contains twenty nine original pencil drawings, mostly by the French illustrator, Louis Malteste (pseudonym used by Jacques d'Icy). Included are portraits of Alfred Dreyfus, Emile Zola, Henri Rochefort, Ferdinand Forzinetti, and Hernand Labori.