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The Dreyfus affair also marked a turning point in the lives of many Jews from Western and Central Europe, as the pogroms of 1881–1882 had done for the Jews of Eastern Europe, as many Jews had believed that they were Frenchmen first.
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The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that rocked France between 1894 and 1906 and revealed growing antisemitism across Europe.
A scandal that rocked France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Dreyfus affair involved a Jewish artillery captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), who was falsely convicted of passing military secrets to the Germans.
In 1894, after a French spy at the German Embassy in Paris discovered a ripped-up letter in a waste basket with handwriting said to resemble that of Dreyfus, he was court-martialed, found guilty of treason and sentenced to life behind bars on Devil’s Island off of French Guiana. In a public ceremony in Paris following his conviction, Dreyfus had the insignia torn from his uniform and his sword broken and was paraded before a crowd that shouted, “Death to Judas, death to the Jew.”
In 1896, the new head of the army’s intelligence unit, Georges Picquart, uncovered evidence pointing to another French military officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, as the real traitor. However, when Picquart told his bosses what he’d discovered he was discouraged from continuing his investigation, transferred to North Africa and later imprisoned.
Nevertheless, word about Esterhazy’s possible guilt began to circulate. In 1898, he was court-martialed but quickly found not guilty; he later fled the country. After Esterhazy’s acquittal, a French newspaper published an open letter titled “J’Accuse…!” by well-known author Emile Zola in which he defended Dreyfus and accused the military of a major cover-up in the case. As a result, Zola was convicted of libel, although he escaped to England and later managed to return to France.
The Dreyfus affair deeply divided France, not just over the fate of the man at its center but also over a range of issues, including politics, religion and national identity.
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1. The Dreyfus Affair became one of the significant political events in French history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 2. Although Dreyfus was eventually exonerated in 1906, the trial and the ensuing public outcry had repercussions that influenced the nature of politics in France for decades to come. 3.
May 20, 2024 · Dreyfus affair, political crisis, beginning in 1894 and continuing through 1906, in France during the Third Republic. The controversy centred on the question of the guilt or innocence of army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had been convicted of treason for allegedly selling military secrets to the Germans in December 1894.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Aug 4, 2023 · When the Germans seized Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, the Dreyfus family moved to Basel, Switzerland, then to Paris. There Alfred chose to pursue a career in the army, enrolling in the Ecole Polytechnique to study military sciences.
4 days ago · Alfred Dreyfus (born October 9, 1859, Mulhouse, France—died July 12, 1935, Paris) was a French army officer whose trial for treason began a 12-year controversy, known as the Dreyfus Affair, that deeply marked the political and social history of the French Third Republic.
Jun 16, 2022 · Zola & J'Accuse. The details of the Dreyfus Affair mesmerized not only the French public but reverberated internationally. French novelist and playwright Émile Zola (1840-1902) issued his famous J’Accuse ( I accuse) in 1898, an elegant and scathing open letter written to the French president Félix Faure.
