![]() ![]() Poor Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty of treason, without proof and was exiled to Devil’s Island, in front of the coast of Guiana, a terribly isolated island used as a French penal colony.īefore being exiled he was publicly degraded, in the presence of 4000 soldiers and 20.000 civilian spectators. Later it turned out that the secret proof was absolutely not real. The proof is so “secret” that the Army could not reveal what it was. New “secret” proof against Dreyfus was produced during the trial. When his case came to court, he and his lawyers were sure he would be found not guilty, as there was absolutely no proof against Dreyfus.īut the prosecution sided with the French Ministry of War. He remained in prison, and an anti-semitic newspaper started to write about the case, accusing Dreyfus and blowing the case to the public, making it mediatized and famous. They said Dreyfus wrote differently, or used a different hand or style of writing, on purpose. The French army didn’t want to admit they caught the wrong man. The handwriting of Dreyfus was not similar to the handwriting in the letter. He was left alone in a room with a charged pistol so he could kill himself and avoid public shame, but he didn’t shoot himself. Nationalism was rising with an anti-semitism feeling, they went hand in hand.ĭreyfus was arrested, questioned and accused of espionage. It is known that Antisemistism happens in cycles in France.ĭreyfus was unlucky, as, since the end of the Franco-Prussian war and the loss of the region the Alsace, there was a general antisemitic idea growing in France: “The Jews were responsible for this disaster” It turned out to be a handwritten, anonymous letter of a French officer in which he promised he would transfer French confidential military documents to a foreign nation.ĭreyfus, being Jewish, was the perfect criminal. In 1894, the cleaning women of the German Embassy in Paris, emptied a garbage can in the offices and discovered a torn letter.Īs she was a spy for the French Counter Intelligence, she brought the letter to her superiors who glued the pieces of letter together. He died in 1935, at the age of 75 and was buried in Paris at the Montparnasse cemetery.ĭuring WW II, his wife, being Jewish, had to hide in the South of France and died shortly after the end of the war. In 1906 he was officially rehabilitated and joined the French army again.ĭuring WW 1, he fought in the French artillery. When he was finally released in 1899, he recuperated in the south of France. The Dreyfus Affair started in 1894 and sent Dreyfus as a prisoner to Devils island for several years. When he was 31, he married the 20 year old Lucie and they had two children, a boy and a girl. Shortly after he started his military career, he joined the artillery where he was ranked Captain in 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated.Ī few years later he joined the Army Headquarters, where in theory he had access to secret documents. He was accepted into the prestigious military officers school founded by Napoleon Bonaparte, “ L’Ecole Polytechnique” and the school of artillery. ![]() The French lost the war and also lost the region the Alsace to the Germans.ĭreyfus’ family, like many other Jewish French families there, did not want to become German and moved to Paris.Īfter high school, Alfred Dreyfus joined the army. In 1870 a war began between France and Prussia ( Germany today ). His father, like many traditional Jews of Alsace, had a textile company. ![]() Let’s find out what happened exactly, who Dreyfus was and what effect “the Affair “had on France, then and today.Īlfred Dreyfus was born in 1859 in the city of Mulhouse, in a region east of France, called the Alsace. The term intellectuals was used for the first time ever in the late 1800-s to designate the writers, scientists, politicians, journalists who supported Dreyfus by believing he was not guilty. Intellectuals! We all know what Intellectuals means… but did you know that this word was tightly linked with the famous Dreyfus-affair? In the footsteps of the Alfred Dreyfus Affair ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |