In the 1890s, the French Third Republic experienced its greatest political and moral crisis. On her side was the Dreyfus affair – as it became known – which was not only a military and political espionage scandal, but at the same time one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in the world.
Specifically, on December 22, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a captain of the French army, of Jewish origin, was found guilty of the charge of having sold French military secrets to the Germans. This political crisis would continue until 1906.
Initially, the publicity surrounding the case came from a certain section of the press. A typical example was the newspaper La Libre Parole, edited by Édouard Dreymont, in whose articles Dreyfus symbolized the alleged infidelity of French Jews. In fact, then, the whole matter revealed to a large extent the perceptions of the French anti-Semitic groups as well.
The attempt to overturn the sentence was initially made only by members of the Dreyfus family. However, when the evidence that gradually came to light, from 1896, highlighted the role of another French officer, Ferdinand Valchen Esterhazy, who appeared to be the real culprit, the side defending Dreyfus slowly gained more followers. . Among them Joseph Reinach and Georges Clemenceau – the future Prime Minister of the First World War – as well as Senator Auguste Surer-Kestner. In fact, France was divided into two large groups: left-wing intellectuals led the fight for Dreyfus, while right-wing politicians and many conservative magazines defended the honor of the army.
The charges against Esterhazy led to a court-martial, which acquitted him of treason charges in January 1898. The latter would flee to Britain. The well-known French writer Emile Zola, as a protest against the specific verdict of the military court, would publish on January 13, 1898, an open letter under the title “J’accuse” (“I accuse”) in the newspaper L’Aurore, where he spoke of covering up the incorrect conviction of Dreyfus by the military. The situation would become even more intense when, in August 1898, an important document on which Dreyfus’s conviction had been based was revealed to be a forgery.
Under these circumstances, and as time went on, the Dreyfus affair would become a vital political issue, as a large portion of the parties in the House of Representatives recognized that the nationalist Right, which was proving to have an increasingly powerful voice , was a threat to the parliamentary regime. In response to the ongoing riots and demonstrations, led by the radical Pierre-Marie René Waldeck-Rousseau, a group would be created in June 1899 aimed at defending democracy and settling the judicial side of the Dreyfus case as quickly as possible.
Finally, a new court-martial was convened in the city of Rennes, which again found Dreyfus guilty in September 1899. Ten days after the trial, French President Emile Loubet would pardon him, thus giving him the right to prove the his innocence.
On July 12, 1906, the Court of Appeal (Cour d’Appel) would finally overturn the decision of the Court of Rennes, thus reinstating Dreyfus, who would return to the army. Subsequently, he also served during World War I as a lieutenant colonel. He died in Paris in 1935, leaving behind a France that had been tormented for decades by this case.
Column editor: Myrto Katsigera, Vassilis Minakakis, Antigoni-Despina Poimenidou, Athanasios Syroplakis
