A NASTY AFFAIR

Alfred Dreyfus came from an upper middle class Jewish family who owned a textile manufactory in a city in Alsace, close to the German/Swiss border. After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, those of the Dreyfus family who wanted to keep their French nationality, moved to Paris.

Compared to other neighboring countries, life in 1890 - France was good for the Jews, for here they were allowed to hold high positions in the army and government. However, anti-semitism was openly displayed in print and public speeches from far-right politicians and journalists.

As a young lad, Alfred Dreyfus had been admitted to the most selective military schools in the country and was later assigned to a sensitive position in the General staff. He was generally praised by his superiors, but not popular with some of his colleagues because of his aloofness and wealthy background. Upon his father’s death he had become rich, and Captain Dreyfus’s personal income now exceeded that of a general officer in the French Army.

In October 1894, shortly after Dreyfus had begun to train for the French Army’s General Staff, he was arrested and charged with passing military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris.
A cleaning lady and spy in the employ of French military counter-intelligence had found a list from the wastepaper basket in the office of the German military attaché in Paris. This so-called bordereau proposed access to technical information concerning a French artillery weapon. Because of Dreyfus’ artillery training, his Alsatian origins and yearly visits to his ailing father, he had become the perfect suspect.

However, the High Command couldn’t find substantial evidence against Dreyfus, and forensic experts couldn’t agree it was written by Dreyfus. Now, if the General Staff withdrew the prosecution, they would face a scandal, something they didn’t want to happen. Thus, false documents were fabricated to incriminate Dreyfus, and it was this protracted cover-up which was at the heart of what later became known as the “Dreyfus Affair”.

Proclaiming his innocence, Dreyfus was not allowed to examine the evidence against him. In 1894, a secret military court found him guilty of espionage and sentenced him to life in prison on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

Before his deportation, Dreyfus was publicly cashiered in the Ecole Militair in Paris: his rank marks and buttons were ripped off his uniform and his saber broken.

After spending 2 years in solitary confinement on the harsh prison island, evidence emerged that a French Army major, a certain Esterhazy was the real culprit. However, the evidence was suppressed by high ranking officers, Esterhazy acquitted, and due to false documents fabricated by French counter-intelligence officers, Alfred Dreyfus even further accused.

Four people fought a hard and lonely campaign to expose the errors in Dreyfus’s conviction: Dreyfus’s brother, a Jewish journalist, a senior infantry officer and the Alsatian vice-president of the French Senate. But it was Lucie, the wife of Alfred Dreyfus, who appealed to Emile Zola, an influential French writer.

Zola risked his career and life when on January 13, 1898, his “J’accuse” appeared on the front page of an important Paris daily. The controversial story, published like an open letter to President Felix Faure, accused the highest levels of the French Army of obstruction of justice and anti-semitism. Being a leading French thinker, his letter became a major turning-point in the affair, but he himself was brought to trial for criminal libel. Zola fled to England and only returned to France when the government fell more than a year later.

The French government offered Dreyfus a pardon, rather than exoneration. Dreyfus accepted, for he knew that a re-trial would result in another conviction.
“The truth is on the march,” Zola said, “and nothing shall stop it.” He was right, but it took another 12 years, before the Supreme Court in 1906 completely exonerated Dreyfus. Even though he was restored to his former military rank, his personal and family life had been deeply damaged by the baseless accusations.

Eventually, as a result of the Dreyfus Affair, in 1905 a legislation was passed which separated Church and state.
But the whole affair had an even greater impact - French anti-Semitism and the injustice of Dreyfus’s conviction had a radicalizing effect on a Hungarian-Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl. Not only did it inspire Herzl in 1896 to write his book Der Judenstaat, he also founded the World Zionist Organization, calling for the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine.

Hardly any of the 80,000 prisoners sent to the disease-infested Devil’s Island came out alive.
Dreyfus was an exception, and able to return to his home in Paris after being pardoned by the president of France in September 1899, 110 years ago this month.