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The Dreyfus affair ( French: affaire Dreyfus, pronounced [afɛːʁ dʁɛfys]) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906.
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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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- Elizabeth Nix
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
Jewish military officer Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason against France in 1894. The trial and ensuing events are known as the “Dreyfus Affair.” Learn more.
The Dreyfus Affair. The 1890s also saw the Third Republic’s greatest political and moral crisis—the Dreyfus Affair. In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a career army officer of Jewish origin, was charged with selling military secrets to the Germans.
The Dreyfus affair was a watershed event in the history of European anti-Semitism. World Jewry was stunned that such an affair could occur in France, the cradle of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The fact that the public, including nobles and members of the clergy, saw Dreyfus–an assimilated Jew–as an outsider seemed to suggest that ...
5 days ago · Alfred Dreyfus 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. Dreyfus was the son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer. In 1882 he entered the École.
