"This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long
as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license", and
provide a link to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
Alfred Dreyfus (October
9, 1859
- July
12, 1935),
French
military officer best known for being the focus of the Dreyfus
affair.
Born in Mulhouse,
Alsace,
France,
Dreyfus was the youngest of seven children in the family of a Jewish textile
manufacturer who had accepted French nationality in 1871.
The family had long been established in Alsace.
He was accepted into the École
Polytechnique for military training in 1877
and graduated in 1880
as a sub-lieutenant. His entry into the military was very much influenced by the
experience of seeing the Prussians enter his hometown in 1871 when he was 11
years old. From 1880
until 1882
he attended at Fontainebleau
for more specialized training as an artillery officer. On graduation he was
attached to the first division of the 32nd cavalry regiment and promoted to
lieutenant in 1885.
In 1889
he was made adjutant to the director of the pyrotechnical school in Bourges,
and promoted to captain.
On April 18, 1891
he was married to Lucie Hadamard (1870-1945) who would later bear his son Pierre
and daughter Jeanne. A mere three days later he received notice that he had been
admitted to the Superior War College. Two years later he graduated ninth in his
class with honourable mention, and is immediately designated as a trainee at
army headquarters where he would be the only Jew. Raphaël, his father, died on December
13, 1893.
In an article from the Académie de Poitiers [1]
the author remarks that "Dreyfus was a profoundly patriotic man, and if he
had not been the victim of this affair he would certainly have been anti-dreyfusard.
He was a haughty, intransigent man, linking very little with his fellow
officers. He was a "pisse-froid" as would then have been said
in the army." In a report in 1891 on his admission to army headquarters a
Colonel Fabre characterized him as "an incomplete officer, very intelligent
and capable, but pretentious and whose character in not filling out, and with
the conscience and manner required for fulfilling the conditions needed for
being employed at army headquarters." This cold personality later proved a
deterrent to some of his would-be defenders.
Dreyfus was arrested for treason on October 15, 1894
and the events that follow until his eventual exoneration on July 12, 1906
are chronicled in the article on the Dreyfus
affair concerning which he was best known. On January
5, 1895
Dreyfus]] was stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's
Island
From the time of his pardon on September 19, 1899
Dreyfus was at least out of prison. During that time he lived with one of his
sisters at Carpentras,
and later at Cologny.
The day after his exoneration he is readmitted into the army with the rank of
Squadron Chief. A week later he is made a Knight in the Legion
of Honour, and subsequently named to the artillery command at Vincennes.
On October 15, 1906
he was placed in commend of the artillery unit at Saint-Denis.
Dreyfus' time in prison, notably at Devil's
Island, had been difficult on his health, and he was granted retirement in
October 1907.
He was re-mobilized during World
War I when he held assignments in the Paris region.
Dreyfus was present at the translation of Emile
Zola's ashes in 1908 when he was wounded in the arm by a gunshot from a
disgruntled journalist.
Two days after Dreyfus's death in Paris,
France his funeral cortege passed the Place
de la Concorde through the ranks of troops assembled for the National
Holiday. He was interred in the Cimetiere
de Montparnasse, Paris,
France.
Publications of Dreyfus
"This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long
as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license", and
provide a link to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
The Dreyfus Affair was a political cover-up
which divided France
for many years in the late 19th
century.
It centered on the 1894 treason conviction of Alfred
Dreyfus, a Jewish
artillery officer in the French army. Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent: the
conviction rested on false documents, and when high-ranking officers realised
this they attempted to cover up the mistakes. The writer
Emile
Zola exposed the affair to the general public in the literary newspaper L'Aurore
(The Dawn) in a famous open letter to the Président
de la République Félix
Faure, titled J'accuse! (I Accuse!) on January
13, 1898.
In the words of historian Barbara W. Tuchman, it was "one of the great
commotions of history".
The virulence of the passions aroused by the case was due to the spread of Anti-Semitism
in France. This may have been due partly to the failure of the Union Générale--a
Roman
Catholic banking establishment which aimed at superseding Jewish finance--in
1885; it also may have been partly due to the publication of Edouard
Drumont's book La France Juive in 1886.
But the case itself was more immediately the outcome of the continuous attack
upon the presence of the Jews as officers in the French army, spearheaded by
Drumont and others in the journal "La Libre Parole" (founded with the
help of the Jesuits in 1892.)
The articles of the "Libre Parole," which denounced French Jewish
officers as being future traitors, led a Jewish captain of dragoons, Crémieu-Foa,
to declare that he resented as a personal insult the slanderous assault made
upon the body of Jewish officers. He fought a duel, 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. 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."
The Marquis de Morès, who had been chief second of Lamase, and was a
well-known anti-Semite and famous duelist, held Captain Mayer, chief second of
Crémieu-Foa, responsible for the breach of confidentiality. Though totally
innocent of any part in the matter, Mayer accepted a challenge from the marquis.
The duel was fought on June 23, the Jewish captain being mortally wounded at the
first attack; he died a few days after the duel. Owing to the sensation that was
caused by this event, the "Libre Parole" thought it wise to stop the
campaign against the Jewish officers until further orders. But the desired
result had been obtained; anti-Semitism had received its baptism of blood.
A lengthy account of the Dreyfus Affair follows, which should be read at
the Wikipedia WEB site at: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair
