Avenue Émile Zola

Arrondissement 15

Place Alfred Dreyfus, Number: 146

The front of the small stone commemorating Zola that since 2000 is in the centre of the Alfred Dreyfus Square

In 1907, within five years of his death the new left-wing majority on the Paris Town Council decided to change the name of the recently built (1905) Rue Frémicourt, to Emile Zola, after the prolific social realist writer.

The 1924 Statue of Zola with a figure representing Work on his right and Fertility below him was melted down along with many other left statues under the German occupation in 1942. Constantin Meunier, the Belgian social realist sculptor had died in 1905. It was only in 1985 that a small commemorative stone was put in its place.

Besides his huge output, Zola’s principal claim to fame is his denunciation of the travesty of justice served upon the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894. In 2000 the section of the avenue where Zola’s memorial stone stood was renamed the Alfred Drefyus Square.

The back of the small stone commemorating Zola that since 2000 is in the centre of the Alfred Dreyfus Square

For a few years from 1908, No. 146 housed a Mutual Aid (Entr’aide) (lingerie and fashion cooperative founded by the feminist and trade unionist Gabrielle Duchêne, who had become politicised by the Dreyfus Affair and was a rare trade unionist who opposed the First World War. She directed the French section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom from 1919 until her death in 1954.

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