On December 19, 1894, a French military officer of Jewish descent was put on trial for treason at a military prison in Paris. The trial, conviction and eventual exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus would become one of the most influential events in modern Jewish history, Zionism and French secularism.
The affair began like a classic tale of counter-espionage. A cleaner at the German embassy in Paris, on the payroll of the French counter-intelligence agency, discovered a torn-up letter containing French military secrets in the embassy’s trash. Following a hasty and extremely flawed investigation, Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery captain stationed at the French military’s General Staff headquarters was accused of betraying his country.
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At the time, most of the French public was eager to believe that Dreyfus
was guilty. The only meaningful campaign to overturn the false
conviction was launched by Dreyfus’ own family, his brother Mathieu
taking the lead. Anti-Semitic forces were also instrumental in the
public condemnation of Dreyfus. The French newspaper,
La Libre Parole, was particularly damning of the Jewish captain and is said to have had great influence on the trial itself.
It would eventually take 12 years for Dreyfus to be exonerated. Along
the way, a new army investigator was threatened and fired for attempting
to bring light to the truth, the actual culprit (French Army Major
Walsin-Esterhazy) was tried and wrongly acquitted, and famous French
writer Emile Zola was convicted of libel for writing an editorial entitled, "J'Accuse" (I accuse you), accusing the French leadership of anti-Semitism in the affair, all before the affair came to an end. The historical
consequences for the French Republic and the Jewish people, however, had
far greater a reach.
Due to the influence of French Catholics and anti-Republicans in the
Dreyfus affair, it became a driving force in the separation between
church and state in modern France that has come to be a defining
characteristic of the state.
Another consequence of the trial was the influence it had on a young
journalist sent to cover the affair by the Vienna newspaper,
Neue Rreie Presse.
As the affair progressed, the journalist, Theodore Herzl, became
convinced of Dreyfus’ innocence. For the future founder of Zionism, the
affair became symbolic of what he would later describe as “the Jewish
problem.”
As a result of seeing the lack of respect, anti-Semitism and persecution
faced by Jews first hand, even in countries they were loyal to and
greatly assimilated in, Herzl began to dream up a solution to the plight
of the Jews. He would later write, “The Dreyfus case embodies more than
just a judicial error; it embodies the desire of a vast majority of the
French to condemn a Jew and to condemn all Jews in this one Jew… In
republican, modern, civilized France.” The solution he devised for “the
Jewish problem” was Zionism, his vision of a liberated Jewish people
living in their own land, which was realized with the creation of the
State of Israel.
Twelve years after his conviction and exile, in July 1906, Alfred
Dreyfus was exonerated and his military rank restored. When World War I
broke out in 1914, the then-55-year-old Dreyfus volunteered to serve his
country once again along with two of his nephews. In recent times,
Dreyfus and his resolute patriotism has been honored by the modern state
of France. A statue commissioned in 1985 still stands in Paris and in
2006, then-French President Jacques Chirac ceremoniously honored
Dreyfus’ exoneration.
The Dreyfus affair continues to live on as an example of the plight of
the Jews and as a justification for the Jewish people’s need of their
own homeland. Furthermore, it is often referenced to this day when Jews
and other minorities find themselves in comparable situations. From the
influence the affair had on Herzl’s dream of Zionism, to its role in the
secularization of France, the Dreyfus Affair remains a highly
influential and historically relevant moment in French and Jewish
history.