Alfred Dreyfus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of the Dreyfus Affair series.

Investigation and arrest

Trial and conviction

Picquart's investigations

Other investigations

Public scandal

Resolution

Alfred Dreyfus

Edit this box

Alfred Dreyfus (9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French-Jewish officer best known for being the focus of the Dreyfus affair.

Contents 1 Biography 2 See also 3 Trivia 4 References

[edit] Biography

Born in Mulhouse, Alsace, Dreyfus was the youngest of seven children in the family of a Jewish textile manufacturer who stayed in France and kept their French nationality when Alsace was annexed by the German Empire in 1871. The family had long been established in Alsace. Alfred was accepted into the École Polytechnique for initial military training and thorough scientific studies in 1877 and graduated in 1880 as a sub-lieutenant.

His entry into the military was influenced by the experience of seeing Prussian troops enter his hometown in 1871 when he was eleven years old. From 1880 to 1882 he attended an academy 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 18 April 1891, Dreyfus married 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 was immediately designated as a trainee at army headquarters, where he would be the only Jew. His father Raphaël died on 13 December 1893.

At the college examination in 1892, his friends had expected him to do well and be attached to the general staff. However, one of the members of the jury, General Bonnefond, who felt that "Jews were not desired" on the staff, lowered the total of his marks by making a very bad report; he did the same thing for another Jewish candidate, Lieutenant Picard. Learning of this injustice, the two officers lodged a protest with the director of the school, Gen. Lebelin de Dionne, who expressed his regret for what had occurred, but said he was powerless to take any steps in the matter. The protest would later count against Dreyfus.

In an article from the Académie de Poitiers 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 is not filling out, and with the conscience and manner required for fulfilling the conditions needed for being employed at army headquarters." This cold, aloof personality later proved a deterrent to some of his would-be defenders.

Dreyfus was arrested for treason on 15 October 1894 and the events that follow until his eventual exoneration on 12 July 1906 are chronicled in the article on the Dreyfus affair concerning which he was best known. On 5 January 1895, Dreyfus was stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island.

On 19 September 1899, Dreyfus was pardoned by President Émile Loubet and left the prison. During that time he lived with one of his sisters at Carpentras, and later at Cologny.

On July 12, 1906, Dreyfus was officially exonerated by a military commission. The day after his exoneration, he was readmitted into the army with the rank of Squadron Chief. A week later, he was made a Knight in the Legion of Honour, and subsequently named to the artillery command at Vincennes. On 15 October 1906, he was placed in command 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 remobilized during World War I and he held assignments in the Paris region. He even served in front-line duty in 1917, although he had reached normal retirement. Dreyfus' son, Pierre, served in numerous battles as an artillery captain and managed to survive the entire war; he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his services.[1]

Dreyfus was present at the ceremony removing Émile Zola's ashes to the Panthéon in 1908, when he was wounded in the arm by a gunshot from Louis Gregori, a disgruntled journalist, in an assassination attempt.

Two days after Dreyfus's death in Paris in 1935, at the age of 75, his funeral cortege passed the Place de la Concorde through the ranks of troops assembled for the Bastille Day National Holiday (14 July 1935). He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

There is a statue of Dreyfus holding his broken sword at the entrance to the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris.

Bibliography

• Lettres d'un innocent (Letters from an innocent man) (1898)
• Les lettres du capitaine Dreyfus à sa femme (Letters from capitaine Dreyfus to his wife) (1899), written at Devil's Island
• Cinq ans de ma vie (5 years of my life) (1901)
• Souvenirs et correspondence, posthumously in 1936

[edit] See also

• Charles Péguy, who wrote a defense of Dreyfus.
• Emile Zola, the author of the pamphlet J'Accuse

[edit] Trivia

• Actor Richard Dreyfuss says that according to family tradition they are related. ^[1] This is disputed by others. ^[2]
• Actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus is said to be a distant relative.^{[citation needed]}
• The father in E. Nesbit's book The Railway Children is said to be inspired by Dreyfus' tale. ^[3]

[edit] References