Alfred Dreyfus
le combat pour la justice

I. Dreyfus and France before the Affair (1870-1894)

Alfred Dreyfus’s family origins

The history of the Dreyfus family illustrates the integration of the Jews of Alsace and Lorraine into the French nation. The industrialist Raphaël Dreyfus, his wife Jeannette and their children, very attached to France, were deeply affected by its defeat in 1870. In order to have his family escape German occupation, Raphaël opted for French nationality, while Jeannette Dreyfus and their eldest son Jacques remained in Mulhouse to safeguard family interests.

Alfred Dreyfus’s career

Alfred Dreyfus was born in Mulhouse in 1859. An ardent patriot and eager to play a part in the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine, he embarked on a successful military career. He entered the École Polytechnique in 1878, and studied at the École d’Application de l’Artillerie et du Génie in Fontainebleau and the École de Pyrotechnie in Bourges. Promoted to captain on 12 September, he entered the École Supérieure de Guerre, graduating 9th out of 81 with first class honours. In January 1893, he entered the War Ministry as a trainee.

Lucie Hadamard and Alfred Dreyfus

Alfred Dreyfus married Lucie Hadamard (1869-1945) on 21 April 1890. The religious ceremony was celebrated in the Synagogue de la Victoire by Chief Rabbi Zadoc Kahn (1839-1905). The young couple, who had a comfortable income, moved into an apartment near the École Militaire. They had two children, Pierre (1891-1946) and Jeanne (1893-1981).

II. The Republic versus Dreyfus (1894-1897)

Justice sacrificed: the 1894 trial

France’s defeat in 1870 plunged the nation into self-doubt and its army into an obsessive fear of espionage. Society and its representations fell prey to anti-Semitism and there was a general distrust of foreigners. A letter stolen at the German Embassy revealed that there was a spy among the officers at the French War Ministry. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was suspected. He was reproached for being a Jew and a modernist officer. His arrest on 15 October 1894 and trial by a military tribunal in December, the result of a plot, were symptomatic of the breakdown of democratic principles. Convicted of high treason, he was stripped of his rank and deported.

Dreyfus at the heart of anti-Semitism: demotion and deportation (1895)

Government and parliament were powerless against the virulence of public opinion and the prerogative of reasons of state. Alfred Dreyfus’s conviction corroborated anti-Semitic theses. The manner in which his sentence was carried out was pitiless: on 5 January 1895, in the ceremonial courtyard of the École Militaire, a crowd shouting its hatred of the Jews watched the ‘spectacle’ of him being stripped of his rank. Furthermore, during his transfer to La Rochelle before his departure for Guyana he narrowly escaped being lynched. This public violence, exacerbated by the anti-Semitic and nationalist press, posed a threat to law and order and the Republic’s democratic heritage.

II. 2. Survival for honour’s sake on Devil’s island (1895-1899)

Captain Dreyfus is deported to Devil’s Island, one of the Îles du Salut in French Guyana, where he is kept in solitary confinement. The penal administration subjects him to increasingly harsh detention conditions. He is forbidden to speak to anyone. In September 1896, he is shut up in his cell and shackled at night. The Colonial Administration and its minister André Lebon react violently to the false news of his escape put out by Mathieu Dreyfus to awaken public opinion. He is no longer allowed to see the sea. The number of guards allotted to him constantly increases. But Alfred Dreyfus does not give up hope, thanks his individual courage and faith in the justice of his country. His wife and family continue to support him in their letters. Although deprived of news of the outside world (his correspondence is censored), he continues to struggle for his rehabilitation, writing letters to the highest authorities of the Republic in vain. Finally, on 16 November 1898, he is informed by the Court of Cassation that his trial will be reviewed. But the Colonial Administration denies him the means of preparing his defence. On 9 June 1899, Dreyfus leaves Devil’s Island, never to return.

III. 1. The fight for justice (1895-1998)

The first Dreyfusards

Mathieu Dreyfus, determined to obtain his brother’s retrial and rehabilitation and aided by the lawyer Edgar Demange, lobbied numerous politicians and journalists. In 1895, Dreyfus’s first supporters joined forces. Aware that the arrest had its roots in anti-Semite preconceived ideas, the Chief Rabbi of France Zadoc Kahn, the writer Bernard Lazare and the politician Joseph Reinach struggled to safeguard the Jews’ civic emancipation and Dreyfus’s right to a fair trial. They were joined by Protestants such as the historian Gabriel Monod, then by Emile Zola. Mathieu’s investigations gradually incriminated Major Walsin-Esterhazy and Bernard Lazare published a brochure demonstrating Alfred Dreyfus’s innocence, Une erreur judiciare. La vérité sur l’affaire Dreyfus, in November 1896.

Truth on the march

Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart, the new chief of the Intelligence Office, found the ‘petit bleu’ addressed to the German military attaché Schwartzkoppen, with Esterhazy’s handwriting on it. But his superiors, Generals Boisdeffre and Gonse, would hear nothing of this and posted him to Tunisia. In October 1896, Colonel Henry wrote a forged letter (the ‘false Henry’) to avert suspicion and further incriminate Dreyfus. Informed of this, the Vice-President of the Senate, Scheurer-Kestner, intervened. On 16 November 1897, Mathieu Dreyfus denounced Esterhazy as the author of the letter. The Dreyfus Affair had become a political affair. After a short court-martial, Esterhazy was acquitted on 11 January 1898. Outraged, Zola wrote an open letter to the President of the Republic. It was published under the headline “J’Accuse…!” on the front page of L’Aurore, Clemenceau’s paper, in 1898. As a result, Zola was convicted and forced into exile.

III.2. The Affair: a French passion (1898-1899)

France divided

Public opinion was split into two camps, the Dreyfusards and the anti-Dreyfusards. In February 1898, Ludovic Trarieux and Auguste Scheurer-Kestner founded the French League for the Defence of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The anti-Dreyfusards Maurice Barrès and Ferdinand Brunetière founded the League for the French Homeland.

Zola was defended by intellectuals and artists. These included Anatole France, the Halévy family and the Revue blanche group (the Natanson brothers, Lucien Herr, Léon Blum, Julien Benda, Robert Dreyfus, Charles Péguy), who officially split with Barrès. The socialist Jean Jaurès turned Alfred Dreyfus into a symbol of the suffering of humanity.

As a result of the Zola trial, Picquart was arrested. But in August 1898, Colonel Henry confessed to forgery and committed suicide. Esterhazy fled to London and the government was discredited. Proof of the machination against Dreyfus accumulated, while the government and parliament, under pressure from the military and public opinion fuelled by the press, threatened the proceedings of the Court of Cassation, charged with the affair in late September 1898.

Towards a retrial

The struggle to obtain a review of the Dreyfus trial became a fight for justice in the Republic as a whole. Dreyfus’s adversaries opposed the review process in vain, voting a law removing the case from the Cour de Cassation. But on 3 June 1899, the magistrates overturned the 1894 verdict and brought Alfred Dreyfus before a new military tribunal in Rennes.

III.3. A tidal wave of anti-Semitism

The imagery

The flood of press, poster and postcard caricatures stigmatising the ‘Jewish Republic’, notably during the Panama Canal scandal, continued throughout the Affair, reaching hitherto unequalled heights of virulence, especially in 1898 and 1899. If anti-Semitism can exist without imagery, those who wanted to whip up public opinion against the Jews systematically used a visual vocabulary inspired by both traditional anti-semitic and anticlerical imagery. Anonymous or famous caricaturists such as Willette, Caran d’Ache, Forain, Orens and Le Petit tried to outdo one another in their attacks on Alfred Dreyfus, the Jews, Zola and the Dreyfusards. The sheer number, colours, obscenity and cruelty of their depictions in La Libre Parole, La Croix, Le Pilori, L’Antijuif, Psst…! and Le Musée des Horreurs had overwhelmingly more impact than the Dreyfusard caricatures.

The facts

In 1898, anti-Semitic riots broke out in over fifty-five towns and cities including Paris, Marseille, Nantes, Rouen, Lyon, Bordeaux, Angers and Nancy. Shouting ‘Death to the Jews!’, ‘Down with Zola!’ and ‘France to the French!’ rioters physically threatened Jews and destroyed synagogues and shops. This wave of support for the anti-Semite leader Édouard Drumont continued until 1902.

In Algeria, both Frenchmen and Algerians contested the Jews’ right to French citizenship, granted by the Crémieux Decree in 1870. In 1897, pillaging and pogroms claimed numerous victims, under the watching eyes of soldiers belatedly sent to restore order. Max Régis, head of the Anti-Jewish League, enjoyed huge popularity. In May 1898, Drumont was elected member of parliament for the province of Algiers.

IV. The impact of the Rennes retrial (1898-late 1899)

Worldwide support for Dreyfus - Jewish reactions to the Dreyfus Affair

Although French public opinion was largely hostile to Dreyfus, international opinion was almost unanimously on his side. The Zola trial had amplified the impact of the Affair abroad. The writer’s commitment was greatly admired and sparked a wave of protest in Dreyfus’ favour.

Alfred Dreyfus’ dismissal with dishonour alarmed the Viennese Jewish journalist and writer Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). In 1896, he published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in which he argued that Jews had to have their own state. In August 1897, he chaired the first Zionist congress in Basle, one of whose resolutions was the founding of a Jewish homeland.

The international event of the Rennes retrial (summer 1899)

Following the decision to review his trial, Alfred Dreyfus was brought back to France. During his retrial in Rennes in the summer of 1899, the town became the focus of the world attention. Although Lucie and Alfred Dreyfus received messages of support from thousands of sympathisers, anti-Dreyfusard threats remained a real menace. One of their lawyers, Fernand Labori, was wounded with a pistol shot. Despite the quality of the defence, the trial fell prey to arbitrariness and became a parody of justice. The military tribunal’s verdict on 9 September - ten years imprisonment and a second dismissal with dishonour - delighted the anti-Dreyfusards and scandalised the Dreyfusards.

After the verdict (September-October 1899)

Alfred Dreyfus, his health now failing, would not survive another long imprisonment. Aided by Reinach, Millerand and Waldeck-Rousseau, Mathieu Dreyfus defied Clemenceau, Labori and Picquart and obtained his brother’s presidential pardon from Emile Loubet on 19 September. Now a free man, Alfred Dreyfus decided to redress the miscarriage of justice of which he had been a victim, declaring, ‘The government of the Republic has given me back my freedom. It is nothing for me without my honour.’

V.1. Rehabilitation (1900-2006)

‘Freedom is nothing without honour’ (1900-1905)

Alfred Dreyfus joined his family at his sister’s home in Carpentras, then left to convalesce in Switzerland for several months. For the first time he met those who had supported him and realised the struggle they had undertook for him. With the Dreyfusards who had remained faithful - many had blamed him for the failure of the Rennes trial - he sought new evidence justifying a second referral to the Court of Cassation.

1906: the decision of the Court of Cassation

Zola’s sudden death in September 1902 and Jaurès’ support in a major speech in Parliament in April 1903, prompted the opening of a War Ministry investigation conducted by General André. The discovery of new machinations decided Émile Combes’ government to refer the case to the Court of Cassation on 26 December 1903. At last, on 12 July 1906, the Court of Cassation fully established Alfred Dreyfus’s innocence. But when he was readmitted into the army he was not promoted to the rank he would have had without the prejudice caused by his arrest.

Intent on regaining his dignity, Alfred Dreyfus decided to resign but remained an officer in the reserves. Ever the patriot, he again did military service during the 1914-18 war.

V.2. The challenge of commemoration

After July 1906, the Dreyfus Affair seemed to have come to a happy end. Still it had not really. Although a victory of law and truth it would remain a very fragile one. For his enemies, it reinforced the ideology of Action Française, who saw Dreyfus’s rehabilitation as the death knell of an ancestral France, of its ‘race’ and grandeur.

The Affair had major significance in the twentieth century, during which reference to the Dreyfusard struggle became a recurrent theme in political and humanitarian mobilisation. Paradoxically, however, the personality of Alfred Dreyfus himself was largely ignored. Forgotten by some, insulted by others, he disappeared from history and collective memory. Compared to the national glory of Zola, Jaurès and even Picquart, and that of the devoted commitment of his brother Mathieu, Alfred Dreyfus was considered to have played a secondary role in the struggle for his rehabilitation. Yet he had been heroic in his resistance to reasons of state and his fidelity to democratic ideals and France.

The Parisian peregrinations of Tim’s statue Hommage to Captain Dreyfus eloquently illustrate how difficult it was for such a long time to publicly honour Alfred Dreyfus.