ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, the joint name of two French writers who wrote in close collaboration. EMILE ERCKMANN (1822-1899) was born on May 20, 1822, at Phalsbourg and died at Luneville on March 14, 1899. ALEXANDRE CHATRIAN was born on Dec. 18, 1826 at Soldatenthal, Lorraine, and died at Villemomble, near Paris, on Sept. 3, 1890. In they began to write together, and continued doing so till 1889. They wrote Histoires et contes fantastiques (1849 ; reprinted from the Democrate du Rhin), L'Illustre Docteur Matheus (1859), Madame Therese (1863) , L'Ami Fritz (1864) , Histoire d'un con scrit de 1813 (1864), Waterloo (1865), Le Blocus (1867), His toire d'un paysan (4 vols., 1868-70), L'Histoire du plebiscite (1872), to Le Grand-pere Lebigue (188o) . Erckmann wrote some successful plays, among them being Le Juif polonais (1869) and Les Rantzau (1882). Without any special literary claim, the Erck mann-Chatrian stories are distinguished by simplicity and genuine descriptive power, particularly in the battle scenes and in connec tion with Alsatian peasant life. They are marked by a sincere democratic spirit. Some of the tales written after 187o are strongly anti-German, but the main body of their work dealing with the Napoleonic wars is anti-imperialistic. The authors attacked militarism by depicting the horrors of war in the plainest terms.
See also J. Claretie, Erckmann-Chatrian (1883) , in the series of "Celebrites contemporaines."