Émile Erckmann

While staying at Paris, Erckmann witnessed the Revolution of 1848: inspired, they founded a political society in Phalsbourg and a short-lived newsletter at Strasbourg.

At the beginning of the 1850s they began publishing in Le Démocrate du Rhin, expecting quick success, but after several years they became disillusioned.

With the Franco-Prussian War, the works of the two lorrains gained a popularity which was closely related to nationalistic desires for revenge and nostalgia for the "blue line of the Vosges" (i.e. the return of Alsace-Lorraine from Germany to France).

In September, Erckmann moved into a house at Saint-Dié, owned by the Goguel family, and the following year he went on a tour of the eastern Mediterranean: Egypt, Libya, Syria and Greece.

Political entanglements started to make life difficult: he met Victor Hugo in 1874 as a result of his republican enthusiasms.

In 1881 the Goguels complained about his relationship with their stewardess, Emma Flotat, and the couple moved out temporarily to Toul, where Erckmann became very ill with jaundice.

On 13 March 1887, Chatrian, at this time battling mental illness, wrote to Erckmann that he was paying ghost-writers out of their common royalties.