Caricature of Carl Mayer Rothschild as a cat smuggling goods

Poster with a caricature of Carl (Karl) Mayer Rothschild with his head on the body of a striped cat using its claws to pull contraband over the French-German border. It was part of Musee des Horreurs, an antisemitic series featuring 52 vicious caricatures of well known Jews and others involved in the Dreyfus Affair. It was produced in 1899-1900 by an artist under the pseudonym V. Lenepveu. The Rothschild family was not involved in the scandal, but their prominence made them targets of the anti-Jewish fanaticism engulfing France. The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal revolving around antisemitism that inflamed France in the late 19th century. Alfred Dreyfus was an army captain found guilty of treason in 1894 for selling French military secrets to the Germans. Antisemitic publications used Dreyfus as a symbol of the disloyalty of all French Jews. In 1896, another man was tried and acquitted of the same crime. Emile Zola, a prominent author and journalist, wrote a letter to protest the verdict, titled "J'Accuse," in which he accused the French Army of covering up its unjust conviction of Dreyfus. Zola was charged with libel and the Dreyfus Affair grew into a national political crisis. An Army intelligence officer was found to have forged the document proving Dreyfus's guilt. But in a second trial at Rennes, despite the confession of the traitor, Esterhazy, the Army again convicted Dreyfus. On September 9, he was sentenced to prison for another ten years. The verdict was met with outrage around the world, and there were threats to boycott the World's Fair in Paris in 1900. Dreyfus was offered a pardon by the president to end the crisis, which he accepted September 19. The poster is one of the more than 900 items in the Katz Ehrenthal Collection of antisemitic artifacts and visual materials.