Social Media

The phrase social media today conveys a world of rapid electronic communication—text messages, emails, Tweets—in which audiences respond to and shape events, even as those events are unfolding. The primary forms in use in the 1890s differed from those used today, but exchanges were remarkably rapid, and remarkably interactive.

Telegrams, letters, and postcards comprised the major modes of correspondence through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout his incarceration, Dreyfus sent and received letters to and from his family, despite observation and censorship. Even these seemingly intimate letters took on public life: they were published in 1899 as Lettres d’un Innocent (Letters of an Innocent Man) and formed part of the campaign in support of Dreyfus’s exoneration. Some “letters” were expressly intended to be public, like, for instance, the open letter from the “Dreyfus Agitation Committee” of Baltimore, Maryland. Other handwritten letters, like an 1899 letter from a group of “Belgian citizens” to Captain Martin Freystaetter—the only judge from 1894 to admit in 1899 that the court had been given secret evidence—were clearly intended as public statements.

Telegrams, the most instantaneous means of communication before the telephone, were heavily used by all sides during public dramas like trials. They were short, much like our own text messages. One remarkable example is that sent by Pierre-Victor Stock, a leading Dreyfusard publisher, to Captain Freystaetter, informing his ally of the verdict of the Rennes trial: “Condemned to 10 years imprisonment by 5 votes to 2.” Examples of the hundreds of postcards produced during the Affair line the bottoms of the cases throughout this exhibit and demonstrate that the humble postcard could also be a vehicle of partisan communication. These cards featured photographic images, caricatures, and commentaries, both heroic and demonic.

Pamphlets, too, could be quickly printed and disseminated, even within hours, and were an important vehicle for individuals to express their views on current events. On display is one example by someone named Henri Strauss from Strasbourg (in Alsace), sent to Zola immediately following the publication of J’Accuse . . . ! and addressed simply to “Monsieur Emile Zolo, homme de lettres, Paris” (“Mr. Emile Zolo, man of letters, Paris”). The piece was received by Zola and remained in his family until very recently.

One Parisian publisher, Léon Hayard, specialized in cheap ephemeral media meant to be shared, but with a nasty edge: his products included a flip card of Zola showing his backside with the phrase “Mon coeur à Dreyfus” (“My Heart Belongs to Dreyfus”), and a movable card with Zola being dunked into a bucket of excrement.