Enduring legacy of the notorious Dreyfus Affair
IALFRED DREYFUS: THE MAN AT THE CENTRE OF THE AFFAIR
Maurice Samuels
Yale University Press, €24.99 n the beginning of Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925) Josef K, a 30-year-old bank clerk, wakes up one morning to find himself arrested, even though he has committed no crime. Alfred Dreyfus suffered a similar fate in October 1894. His superiors in the French military accused him of selling military secrets to Germany and he was imprisoned for five years.
“The Dreyfus Affair plunged France into a domestic political crisis because it raised fundamental questions about the nature of liberal democracy — the form of government that guaranteed rights to the individual through the rule of law,” writes Yale historian Maurice Samuels, in Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Centre of the Affair.
The book begins by looking at Dreyfus’s early life. After joining the army in 1880, aged 21, he moved to Paris. His father, Raphael was a millionaire. This made Dreyfus a suitable candidate to court Lucie Eugenie Hadamard, another French Jewish aristocrat.
The couple married in April 1891. Within two years Lucie bore two children, Pierre and Jeanne. The family lived in a salubrious neighbourhood in the 16th district of Paris and kept horses and employed servants.
But on the morning of October 17, 1894, domestic bliss turned into a living hell, when Dreyfus was summoned to the ministry of war. First, he was conned into giving a sample of his handwriting. Then he was arrested for high treason.
The evidence (or lack of it) that prompted Dreyfus’s initial arrest is a complex tale with many characters. Samuels provides a brilliant, detailed analysis.
It centred on a document the French counter-intelligence service came into possession of in September 1894 called “the bordereau”. The details of the document mentioned munitions (where Dreyfus worked) specifically. This led many within the army hierarchy to believe he was a traitor and a spy.
But “Dreyfus’s Jewishness played a major role in the case”, the author explains.
This is the main thesis the book puts forward. It also looks at how antisemitism was rampant in France at the turn of the 20th century. Most it was driven by conservatives who were against the emancipation that Jews were granted after the French Revolution. This far-right faction in France wanted to bring the country back to an old feudal order, where Jews would be denied equality before the law.
Samuels provides just enough history and political theory to fit the Dreyfus Affair into a much needed broader context. But he doesn’t lose sight of the fact he is, after all, writing a biography. Most historians have tended to portray Dreyfus as a cold, aloof, awkward, unlikeable, and anti-social figure. Samuels describes a shy and private family man who was capable of great strength, courage and sensitivity.
In December 1894, a French court found Dreyfus guilty of treason. For the next five years he was imprisoned on Devil’s Island, a French penal colony off the coast of South America. Letters were his saving grace. “It seems to me, when I write to you... that I see your beloved face in front of me,” Dreyfus wrote in one of many letters he penned to his wife at this time.
Lucie worked tirelessly behind the scenes to clear her husband’s name. It wasn’t easy. Many close friends and family shunned her. But when the case went public, many outspoken intellectuals lent their support.
The French novelist Emile Zola was among them. He caused a national sensation in France when he wrote an open letter published on the front page of the liberal newspaper L’ Aurore. Addressed to the French prime minister, Felix Faure, under the headline “J’accuse”, the article compared the twists and turns of the Dreyfus case to a lowbrow novel and repeatedly called for Dreyfus to be freed. Which he was, eventually.
In June 1899, the High Court of Appeal in France found there had been insufficient evidence, and Dreyfus’s initial guilty verdict was overturned.
More complex legalities followed. Dreyfus was brought back to France for a second trial and found guilty again. Pardoned in September 1899, Dreyfus was finally exonerated for treason and awarded the Legion of Honor by the French state in 1906.
Samuels dedicates one chapter here to looking at the legacy the Dreyfus Affair had on the Jewish community in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. It was pretty significant. The Hungarian journalist and writer, Theodor Herzl, claimed it inspired him, in 1897, to found the Zionist movement — which advocated for Jews to form their own nation in Palestine.
Today, the remains of Israel’s founding father (who died in 1904 and never lived to see the birth of state of Israel in 1948) sit beside Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the six million victims of the Holocaust.
Given the brutal history of the Jewish people, it isn’t surprising that victimhood plays an important role in Israel’s founding myth.
But what happens when – to paraphrase the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra – yesterday’s victims turn into today’s aggressive victimisers?
Samuels gives little time or ink to this issue. Granted, the final text of the book appears to have gone to press before the Israel-Hamas war. Still, Israel has been an occupying power for decades.
The Dreyfus Affair “asked whether religious and racial minorities belonged in the nation at all”, the author writes. This question rarely gets a passing mention in Israel’s Knesset (parliament) today.
The Dreyfus Affair asked whether religious and racial minorities belonged in the nation at all
them! And knowing the sheer blood and guts that goes into writing a book, I’d never dream of naming any names.
The book you give as a gift? I’ve recently given the aforementioned Almost Everything... and The Bee Sting to family members, and to those family/ friends with writing aspirations, I’ve given Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, and On Writing by Stephen King – which are as much about life as writing.
The writer who shaped you? Maeve Binchy. After a diet of Jilly Cooper, Danielle Steel, et al, it was wonderful to see a warm, natural, Irish storyteller capture the global stage with compelling and memorable stories about ordinary Irish people being the heroes and heroines of their own lives. In her books, Maeve explored the complexities of everyday relationships with a compassionate and insightful touch, and she blazed a bright new trail that enabled a lot of Irish writers to follow in her slipstream, including me.
The book you would most like to be remembered for?
I hope The Birthday Weekend ,a suspenseful story about friendship, sisterhood and buried secrets, will be remembered for granting readers a gripping, immersive experience they thoroughly enjoyed. But I feel honoured when I hear any of my books have kept a reader turning the pages.