Capt Alfred Dreyfus AFFAIR France MAGIC LANTERN SLIDE Jew Judaica Treason Prison For Sale

Captain Alfred Dreyfus
The Dreyfus Affair
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4\" x 3.125\"The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The affair is often seen as a modern and universal symbol of injustice, and it remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice. The major role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the lasting social conflict.The scandal began in December 1894 with the treason conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian and Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil\'s Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.Evidence came to light in 1896—primarily through an investigation instigated by Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage—identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterházy as the real culprit. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterházy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army then accused Dreyfus with additional charges based on falsified documents. Word of the military court\'s framing of Dreyfus and of an attempted cover-up began to spread, chiefly owing to J\'accuse!, a vehement open letter published in a Paris newspaper in January 1898 by famed writer Émile Zola. Activists put pressure on the government to reopen the case.In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (now called \"Dreyfusards\"), such as Sarah Bernhardt, Anatole France, Henri Poincaré and Georges Clemenceau, and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Édouard Drumont, the director and publisher of the antisemitic newspaper La Libre Parole. The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was given a pardon and set free. Eventually all the accusations against Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. In 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He died in 1935.The affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France deeply and lastingly into two opposing camps: the pro-Army, mostly Catholic \"anti-Dreyfusards\" and the anticlerical, pro-republican Dreyfusards. It embittered French politics and encouraged radicalization.
Summary
At the end of 1894 a French army captain named Alfred Dreyfus, a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and a Jew of Alsatian origin, was accused of handing secret documents to the Imperial German military. After a closed trial, he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to prison for life. He was deported to Devil\'s Island. At that time, the opinion of the French political class was unanimously unfavourable towards Dreyfus.Certain of the injustice of the sentence, the family of the Captain, through his brother Mathieu, worked with the journalist Bernard Lazare to prove his innocence. Meanwhile Colonel Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage, found evidence in March 1896 indicating that the real traitor was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterházy. The General Staff, however, refused to reconsider its judgment and transferred Picquart to North Africa.In July 1897 his family contacted the President of the Senate Auguste Scheurer-Kestner to draw attention to the tenuousness of the evidence against Dreyfus. Scheurer-Kestner reported three months later that he was convinced of the innocence of Dreyfus and also persuaded Georges Clemenceau, a former MP and then a newspaper reporter. In the same month, Mathieu Dreyfus complained to the Ministry of War against Walsin-Esterházy. While the circle of Dreyfusards widened, in January 1898 two nearly simultaneous events gave a national dimension to the case: Esterházy was acquitted of treason charges (afterwards shaving his moustache and fleeing France), and Émile Zola published his \"J\'Accuse ...!,\" a Dreyfusard declaration that rallied many intellectuals to Dreyfus\' cause. France became increasingly divided over the case, and the issue continued to be hotly debated until the end of the century. Antisemitic riots erupted in more than twenty French cities. There were several deaths in Algiers. The Republic was shaken, which prompted a sense that the Dreyfus Affair had to be resolved to restore calm and protect the stability of the nation.Despite the intrigues of the army to quash the case, the first judgment against Dreyfus was annulled by the Supreme Court after a thorough investigation and a new court-martial was held at Rennes in 1899. Despite increasingly robust evidence to the contrary, Dreyfus was convicted again and sentenced to ten years of hard labour, though the sentence was commuted due to extenuating circumstances. Exhausted by his deportation for four long years, Dreyfus accepted the presidential pardon granted by President Émile Loubet. It was only in 1906 that his innocence was officially recognized through a decision without recourse by the Supreme Court. Rehabilitated, Dreyfus was reinstated in the army with the rank of Major and participated in the First World War. He died in 1935.The implications of this case were numerous and affected all aspects of French public life. In politics, the affair established the triumph of the Third Republic (and became a founding myth);[3] in the renewal of nationalism, in the military. In religion, it slowed the reform of French Catholicism and republican integration of Catholics; and in social, legal, press, diplomatic and cultural life. It was during the affair that the term intellectual was coined. The affair engendered numerous antisemitic demonstrations, which in turn affected emotions within the Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe. These demonstrations affected the international movement of Zionism by persuading one of its founding fathers, Theodor Herzl, that the Jews must leave Europe and establish their own state.
Political
In 1894, the Third Republic was twenty-four years old. Although the May 16th Crisis in 1877 had crippled the political influence of both the Bourbon and Orléanist royalists, its ministries continued to be short-lived as the country lurched from crisis to crisis: three immediately preceding the Dreyfus Affair were the near-coup of Georges Boulanger in 1889, the Panama scandal in 1892, and the anarchist threat (reduced by the \"villainous laws\" of July 1894). The elections of 1893 were focused on the \"social question\" and resulted in a Republican victory (just under half the seats) against the conservative right and the strength of the Radicals (about 150 seats) and Socialists (about 50 seats).The opposition of the Radicals and Socialists resulted in a centrist government where political choices were oriented towards economic protectionism, a certain indifference to the social question, a willingness to break international isolation, the Russian alliance, and development of the Empire. These politics of the centre caused ministerial instability, with certain Republicans from the government sometimes aligning with the radicals and some Orléanists aligning with the Legitimists in five successive governments from 1893 to 1896. This governmental instability was reflected in an unstable presidency: President Sadi Carnot was assassinated on 24 June 1894, then his moderate successor Jean Casimir-Perier resigned on 15 January 1895 and was replaced by Félix Faure.Following the failure of the radical government of Léon Bourgeois in 1896, the president appointed Jules Meline, who had been a supporter of protectionism under Jules Ferry. His government acknowledged the opposition of the left and some Republicans (including the Progressive Union) and always made certain of the support of the right. He sought to appease tensions in the religious (by slowing the anticlerical struggle), social (by passage of the law on the liability of work accidents), and economic (by maintenance of protectionism) sectors and he conducted a fairly conservative policy. These policies achieved stability, and it was under this stable government that the Dreyfus Affair actually broke out.Military background
The Dreyfus Affair occurred within the context of the annexation of Alsace and Moselle by the Germans, an event that fed the most extreme nationalism. The traumatic defeat in 1870 seemed far away, but a vengeful spirit remained. Many participants in the Dreyfus Affair were also Alsatian.[Note 1]The military required considerable resources to prepare for the next conflict, and it was in this spirit that the Franco-Russian Alliance, which some saw as \"against nature\",[Note 2] of 27 August 1892 was signed as the basis of a military convention. The army had recovered from the defeat but many of its officers were former senior aristocrats and were monarchists. The cult of the flag and contempt for the parliamentary republic were two important principles in the army of the time.[5] The Republic celebrated its army regularly; the army ignored the Republic.Over the previous ten years the army had experienced a significant shift in its twofold aim to democratize and modernize. The graduates of the École polytechnique competed effectively with officers from the royal career path of Saint-Cyr, which caused strife, bitterness, and jealousy among those junior officers who expected promotions of their choice. The period was also marked by an arms race that primarily affected artillery. There were improvements in heavy artillery (guns of 120 mm and 155 mm, Models 1890 Baquet, new hydropneumatic brakes), but also and especially the development of the ultra-secret 75mm gun. The operation of military counterintelligence, alias the \"Statistics Section\" (SR), should be noted. Spying as a tool for secret war was a novelty as an organised activity in the late 19th century. The Statistics Section was created in 1871 but consisted of only a handful of officers and civilians. Its head in 1894 was Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Sandherr, a graduate of Saint-Cyr, an Alsatian from Mulhouse, and a convinced anti-Semite. Its military mission was clear: to retrieve information about potential enemies of France and to feed them false information. The Statistics Section was supported by the \"Secret Affairs\" of the Quai d\'Orsay at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was headed by a young diplomat, Maurice Paléologue. The arms race created an acute atmosphere of intrigue in French counter-espionage from 1890. One of the missions of the section was to spy on the German Embassy at Rue de Lille in Paris to thwart any attempt to transmit important information to the Germans. This was especially critical since several cases of espionage had already hit the headlines of newspapers, which were fond of sensationalism. Thus in 1890 the archivist Boutonnet was convicted for selling plans of shells that used melinite.The German military attaché in Paris in 1894 was Count Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, who developed a policy of infiltration which appears to have been effective. In the 1880s Schwartzkoppen had begun an affair with an Italian military attache, Lieutenant Colonel Count Alessandro Panizzardi.[7] While neither had anything to do with Dreyfus, their intimate and erotic correspondence (e.g. \"Don’t exhaust yourself with too much buggery.\"),[8] which was obtained by the authorities, lent an air of truth to other documents that were forged by prosecutors to lend retroactive credibility to Dreyfus\'s conviction as a spy. Some of these forgeries even referenced the real affair between the two officers; in one, Alessandro supposedly informed his lover that if \"Dreyfus is brought in for questioning,\" they must both claim that they \"never had any dealings with that Jew. … Clearly, no one can ever know what happened with him.\"[9] The letters, real and fake, provided a convenient excuse for placing the entire Dreyfus dossier under seal, given that exposure of the liaison would have \'dishonoured\' Germany and Italy\'s military and compromised diplomatic relations. As homosexuality was, like Judaism, then often perceived as a sign of national degeneration, recent historians have suggested that combining them to inflate the scandal may have shaped the prosecution strategy. Since early 1894, the Statistics Section had investigated traffic in master plans for Nice and the Meuse conducted by an officer whom the Germans and Italians nicknamed Dubois.[Note 3] This is what led to the origins of the Dreyfus Affair.
Social
The social context was marked by the rise of nationalism and of antisemitism.The growth of antisemitism, virulent since the publication of Jewish France by Édouard Drumont in 1886 (150,000 copies in the first year), went hand in hand with the rise of clericalism. Tensions were high in all strata of society, fueled by an influential press, who were virtually free to write and disseminate any information even if offensive or defamatory. Legal risks were limited if the target was a private person.Antisemitism did not spare the military, which practiced hidden discrimination with the famous \"cote d\'amour\" system of irrational grading, encountered by Dreyfus in his application to the Bourges School.[12] However, while prejudices of this nature undoubtedly existed within the confines of the General Staff, the French Army as a whole was relatively open to individual talent. At the time of the Dreyfus Affair there were an estimated 300 Jewish officers in the army (about 3 per cent of the total), of whom ten were generals. The popularity of the duel using sword or small pistol, sometimes causing death, bore witness to the tensions of the period. When a series of press articles in La Libre Parole[14] accused some brilliant Jewish officers of \"betraying their birth\", the officers challenged the editors. Captain Crémieu-Foa, a Jewish Alsatian graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, fought unsuccessfully against Drumont[Note 4][15] and against M. de Lamase, who was the author of the articles. Captain Mayer, another Jewish officer, was killed by the Marquis de Mores, a friend of Drumont, in another duel, which triggered considerable emotion far beyond Jewish circles.Hatred of Jews was now public and violent, driven by a firebrand (Drumont) who demonized the Jewish presence in France. Jews in metropolitan France in 1895 numbered about 80,000 (40,000 in Paris alone), who were highly integrated into society; an additional 45,000 Jews lived in Algeria. The launch of La Libre Parole with a circulation estimated at 200,000 copies in 1892,[16] allowed Drumont to expand his audience to a popular readership already enticed by the boulangiste adventure in the past. The antisemitism circulated by La Libre Parole, as well as by L’Éclair, Le Petit Journal, La Patrie, L\'Intransigeant and La Croix, drew on antisemitic roots in certain Catholic circles.L\'affaire Dreyfus est un conflit social et politique majeur de la Troisième République survenu à la fin du XIXe siècle, autour de l\'accusation de trahison faite au capitaine Alfred Dreyfus qui est finalement innocenté. Elle a bouleversé la société française pendant douze ans, de 1894 à 1906, la divisant profondément et durablement en deux camps opposés, les « dreyfusards » partisans de l\'innocence de Dreyfus, et les « antidreyfusards » partisans de sa culpabilité.La condamnation fin 1894 du capitaine Dreyfus — pour avoir prétendument livré des documents secrets français à l\'Empire allemand — était une erreur voire un complot judiciaire1,2 sur fond d\'espionnage, dans un contexte social particulièrement propice à l\'antisémitisme et à la haine de l\'Empire allemand à la suite de son annexion de l\'Alsace et d\'une partie de la Lorraine en 1871. L\'affaire rencontre au départ un écho limité, avant qu\'en 1898 l\'acquittement du véritable coupable et la publication d\'un pamphlet dreyfusard par Émile Zola, J\'accuse…!, provoquent une succession de crises politiques et sociales. À son paroxysme en 1899, l\'affaire révéla les clivages de la France de la Troisième République, où l\'opposition entre les camps dreyfusard et antidreyfusard suscita de très violentes polémiques nationalistes et antisémites, diffusées par une presse influente. Elle s\'acheva en 1906, par un arrêt de la Cour de cassation qui innocenta et réhabilita définitivement Dreyfus.Cette affaire est souvent considérée comme le symbole moderne et universel de l\'iniquité3 au nom de la raison d\'État, et reste l\'un des exemples les plus marquants d\'une erreur judiciaire difficilement réparée, avec un rôle majeur joué par la presse et l\'opinion publique.Résumé de l\'affaire Dreyfus
À la fin de l\'année 1894, le capitaine de l\'armée française Alfred Dreyfus, polytechnicien4, juif d\'origine alsacienne, accusé d\'avoir livré aux Allemands des documents secrets, est condamné au bagne à perpétuité pour trahison et déporté sur l\'île du Diable. À cette date, l\'opinion comme la classe politique française est unanimement défavorable à Dreyfus.Certaine de l\'incohérence de cette condamnation, la famille du capitaine, derrière son frère Mathieu, tente de prouver son innocence, engageant à cette fin le journaliste Bernard Lazare. Parallèlement, le colonel Georges Picquart, chef du contre-espionnage, constate en mars 1896 que le vrai traître avait été le commandant Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. L\'état-major refuse pourtant de revenir sur son jugement et affecte Picquart en Afrique du Nord.Afin d\'attirer l\'attention sur la fragilité des preuves contre Dreyfus, sa famille décide de contacter en juillet 1897 le respecté vice-président du Sénat Auguste Scheurer-Kestner qui fait savoir, trois mois plus tard, qu\'il a acquis la conviction de l\'innocence de Dreyfus, et qui en persuade également Georges Clemenceau, ancien député et alors simple journaliste. Le même mois, Mathieu Dreyfus porte plainte auprès du ministère de la Guerre contre Walsin Esterhazy. Alors que le cercle des dreyfusards s\'élargit, deux événements quasi simultanés donnent en janvier 1898 une dimension nationale à l\'affaire : Esterhazy est acquitté, sous les acclamations des conservateurs et des nationalistes ; Émile Zola publie « J\'accuse…! », réquisitoire dreyfusard qui entraîne le ralliement de nombreux intellectuels. Un processus de scission de la France est entamé, qui se prolonge jusqu\'à la fin du siècle. Des émeutes antisémites éclatent dans plus de vingt villes françaises. On dénombre plusieurs morts à Alger. La République est ébranlée, certains la voient même en péril, ce qui incite à en finir avec l\'affaire Dreyfus pour ramener le calme.Malgré les menées de l\'armée pour étouffer cette affaire, le premier jugement condamnant Dreyfus est cassé par la Cour de cassation au terme d\'une enquête minutieuse, et un nouveau conseil de guerre a lieu à Rennes en 1899. Dreyfus est condamné une nouvelle fois, à dix ans de détention, avec circonstances atténuantes. Dreyfus accepte par la suite la grâce présidentielle, accordée par le président Émile Loubet. C\'est en 1906 que son innocence est officiellement établie au travers d\'un arrêt sans renvoi de la Cour de cassation5. Réhabilité, le capitaine Dreyfus est réintégré dans l\'armée au grade de commandant et participe à la Première Guerre mondiale. Il meurt en 1935.Les conséquences de cette affaire sont innombrables et touchent tous les aspects de la vie publique française : politique (elle consacre le triomphe de la IIIe République, dont elle devient un mythe fondateur6 tout en renouvelant le nationalisme), militaire, religieux (elle ralentit la réforme du catholicisme français, ainsi que l\'intégration républicaine des catholiques), social, juridique, médiatique, diplomatique et culturel (c\'est à l\'occasion de l\'affaire que le terme d\'intellectuel est forgé). L\'affaire a également un impact international sur le mouvement sioniste au travers d\'un de ses pères fondateurs : Théodore Herzl et de par l\'émoi que ses manifestations antisémites vont provoquer au sein des communautés juives d\'Europe centrale et occidentale.SEE MY OTHER sales FOR SIMILAR!
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