Dreyfus Affair

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of the Dreyfus Affair
series.

The effects of the Dreyfus Affair

The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal which divided France during the 1890s and early 1900s. It involved the wrongful conviction of Jewish military officer Alfred Dreyfus for treason.

1 Background
2 Politics
3 La Libre Parole
4 Conviction and pardon
5 Aftermath
6 Discussion of Theodor Herzl
7 Films
8 See also
9 External links
10 Further reading

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Background

Captain Alfred Dreyfus in military uniform and wearing a mustache.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was the highest-ranking Jewish artillery officer in the French army. He was charged with passing military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, and in 1894 he was convicted of treason and sent to prison on Devil's Island. The conviction was based on documents which were found in the waste-paper basket of the German miltiary attaché, Major Max von Schwartzkoppen, and which initially appeared to the French military authorities to implicate Dreyfus. Fearing that the sometimes anti-semitic press would learn of the affair and accuse the French army of covering up for a Jewish officer, the French military command pushed for an early trial and acquittal. By the time they realised that they had very little evidence against Dreyfus (and that what they had was not at all conclusive), it was already politically impossible to withdraw the prosecution without provoking a political scandal that would have brought down the French government. The subsequent court martial was notable for numerous errors of procedure (most notably, the defence was unaware of a secret dossier which the prosecution provided to the military judges).

The writer Émile Zola is often thought to have exposed the affair to the general public in a famous open letter to President Félix Faure to which the French statesman and journalist Georges Clemenceau appended the eye-catching title "J'accuse!" (I Accuse!); it was published 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn). In the words of historian Barbara Tuchman, it was "one of the great commotions of history". Zola in fact came on the scene very late in the day. The real credit for exposing the flaws behind Dreyfus' conviction belongs to Dreyfus' brother Mathieu who fought a lonely campaign for several years, the journalist Lazard, a whistle-blower in the intelligence service Colonel Picquardt and the politician Scheurer-Kestner who brought the injustice to the attention of the French political class.

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Politics

The Dreyfus Affair bitterly divided the whole of French society. Here, caricaturist Caran d'Ache depicts a fictional family dinner. At the top, somebody remarks "...Above all! let's not speak of the Dreyfus Affair!". At the bottom, the caption reads "...They spoke of it..."

The Dreyfus Affair split France into Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. The sometimes-violent quarrel involved controversial issues in a heated political climate. To some extent, the division was between right-wing anti-Dreyfusards supportive of a return to monarchy and clericalism (the involvement of the Roman Catholic Church in public policy) and left-wing Dreyfusards supportive of the Republic and angry with the Church. However, some right-wingers supported Dreyfus for his courage and some left-wingers opposed him for his bourgeois background.

The virulence of the passions aroused by the case was to a large extent due to anti-Semitism, which often related to Catholic, reactionary, and anti-Republican feelings. Anger was further aroused by the 1885 failure of the Union Generale, a Roman Catholic banking establishment which aimed at superseding Jewish finance. And the 1886 publication of Edouard Drumont's book La France Juive (Jewish France) also increased hostility.

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La Libre Parole

The immediate impact of the case itself was continuous social attacks on Jewish officers in the French army, spearheaded by Drumont and others in the journal "La Libre Parole" ("Free Speech"). Founded in 1892 (allegedly with Jesuit involvement), the journal denounced French Jewish officers as being future traitors which led a Jewish captain of dragoons, Crémieu-Foa, to declare the slanderous assault made upon the body of Jewish officers, a personal insult.

Crémieu-Foa fought duels, first with Drumont, then with Lamase, under whose name the articles had appeared. It had been agreed that the report of the proceedings should not be made public. (Drumont was slightly hurt in the first duel, and all bullets went wide in the second duel.) The brother of Crémieu-Foa, following the advice of Captain Esterhazy, one of the Jewish captain's seconds, communicated the information to the journal "Matin." (A second is a witness supportive of one of the participants in a duel.)

The Marquis de Morès, who had been chief second of Lamase and was a well-known anti-Semite and famous duellist, held Captain Mayer, chief second of Crémieu-Foa, responsible for the breach of confidentiality. Though innocent of the matter, Mayer accepted a challenge from the marquis. The duel was fought on 23 June 1892, the Jewish captain being mortally wounded at the first attack and dying a few days later. Owing to the sensation caused by this event, the "Libre Parole" thought it wise to stop the campaign against Jewish officers until further orders.

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Conviction and pardon

The dishonourable discharge of Dreyfus.

L'Aurore's front page on 13 January 1898 features Emile Zola's open letter to the French President Félix Faure regarding the Dreyfus Affair.

Alfred Dreyfus was put on trial in 1894 and was accused of espionage, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison on Devil's Island. In September of 1899, he accepted a pardon from the president of France (which brought his immediate release, but implied a tacit admission of guilt), but it was not until 1906 that Dreyfus was exonerated of the charges and readmitted into the army. He was also made a knight in the Legion of Honour. Dreyfus served behind the lines of the Western Front during the Great War.

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Aftermath

The factions in the Dreyfus affair remained in place for decades afterwards. The far right remained a potent force, as did the moderate liberals. The liberal victory played an important role in pushing the far right to the fringes of French politics. It also prompted legislation such as a 1905 enactment separating church and state. The coalition of partisan anti-Dreyfusards remained together, but turned to other causes. Groups like Maurras' Action Française that were created during the affair endured for decades. The right-wing Vichy regime was composed mostly of old anti-Dreyfusards or their descendants. It is now universally agreed that Dreyfus was innocent, but his statues and monuments are occasionally vandalised by far-right activists.

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Discussion of Theodor Herzl

A Jewish-Austrian journalist named Theodor Herzl was assigned to report on the trial and its aftermath. Soon afterward, Herzl wrote The Jewish State (1896) and founded the World Zionist Organisation, which called for the creation of a Jewish State. For many years it was believed that the anti-Semitism and injustice revealed in supposedly enlightened France by the conviction of Dreyfus had a radicalizing effect on Herzl, showing him that Jews could never hope for fair treatment in European society, thus orienting him toward Zionism. Herzl himself promoted this view, which, in the past few decades, however, has been rejected by historians who have closely examined the chronology of events. They have shown that Herzl, like most contemporary observers, including Jews, initially believed Dreyfus's guilt. While eventually convinced of Dreyfus's innocence and indeed upset by French anti-Semitism beyond l'Affaire, Herzl seems to have been much more influenced by developments in his home city of Vienna, including the rise to power of the anti-Semitic Mayor Karl Lueger. It was this, rather than the Dreyfus Affair, which provided the chief stimulus for his support for a Jewish homeland, and which did so at a time (1895) when the pro-Dreyfus campaign had not really begun.

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Films

"L'Affaire Dreyfus", Georges Méliès, Stumm, France, 1899
"Trial of Captain Dreyfus", Stumm, USA, 1899
"Dreyfus", Richard Oswald, Germany, 1930
"The Dreyfus Case", F.W. Kraemer, Milton Rosmer, USA, 1931
"The Life of Emile Zola", USA, 1937
"I Accuse!", José Ferrer, England, 1958
"Die Affäre Dreyfus", Yves Boisset, 1995

An American television film of 1991, "Prisoner of Honor", focuses on the efforts of a Colonel Piquart to justify the sentence of Alfred Dreyfus. (Colonel Piquart was played by American actor Richard Dreyfuss, who claims to be a descendant of Alfred Dreyfus).

Some believe this event to be the firestarter for WWI.

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