La Clé de L'Affaire Dreyfus (The Decisive Evidence in the Dreyfus Affaire)

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La Clé de L'Affaire Dreyfus (The Decisive Evidence in the Dreyfus Affaire)
c. 1894-1906

About the Item

A Key to the Dreyfus Affaire (La Clé de L'Affaire Dreyfus). Broadside placard printed y Paul Lemaire showing the forged documents and handwriting samples that played a key role in convicting and later exonerating Captain Alfred Dreyfus of high treason. The Dreyfus Affair (French: l'affaire Dreyfus) 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 and anti-semitism. The major role played by the press and public opinion was pivotal in the exoneration of Dreyfus and his reinstatement in the French Army. 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 Esterhazy as the real culprit. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy 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 (known as 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 anti-semitic 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. 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 the renewal of nationalism, in the military. In religion, it slowed the reform of French Catholicism and republican integration of Catholics in social, legal, press, diplomatic and cultural life. It was during the affair that the term intellectual was coined. The affair engendered numerous anti-semitic 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. Further Background by Piers Paul Read: France in the last decades of the 19th century saw an extraordinary flourishing in the arts, the sciences and technology which, along with its climate of sexual permissiveness, earned this period the title of la belle époque. To celebrate these achievements, the French government prepared for a Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900, with an ambitious programme of building that included two railway stations, Gare de Lyon and Gare d’Orsay, and two exhibition halls, the Grand and the Petit Palais. These plans were suddenly jeopardized, in the autumn of 1899, by an international campaign to boycott the exhibition, a result of the outrage felt throughout the world at the conviction, at a court martial in Rennes, of a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, on charges of passing secret documents to the Germans. This was his second court martial. The first, five years earlier, had led to a sentence of life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. A campaign by his family, his lawyer and a small number of supporters had eventually uncovered overwhelming evidence that the traitor was not Dreyfus but another officer, Charles Walsin-Esterhazy. However, senior officers on the general staff and in military intelligence feared that to admit a miscarriage of justice would not just lose them their jobs but discredit the army. To thwart a revision of the case against Dreyfus, they resorted to a series of threats, forgeries and dirty tricks. On January 13, 1898, France’s leading novelist, Émile Zola, entered the fray with a polemic, J’Accuse, naming the officers responsible for the conspiracy against Dreyfus. It was hailed as heroic by the Left, outrageous by the Right, and provoked anti-Semitic riots throughout France. Opinion abroad was incredulous. How could France, the most civilised country in Europe, experience this eruption of medieval barbarism? Why had the case of one Jewish officer led to this rage against all Jews? The fuse leading to this explosion of ancient animosities can be traced back to the revolution of 1789, which emancipated the Jews but also led to a persecution of Catholics so savage that it was, in the view of the historian Michael Burleigh, “tantamount to genocide”. The mutual antagonism between conservative Catholics and radical republicans simmered throughout the 19th century. (...) Thanks to the growth in industry and a money economy, Protestants and Jews had become rich and powerful: they controlled the “commanding heights of the economy”. The conspicuous consumption and political corruption of this new plutocracy provoked resentment, particularly since, at a time of growing national rivalries, it was felt that neither Protestants nor Jews were “true Frenchmen of France” It became a fixation in the minds of French nationalists – not just rioters in cities like Rennes or Nantes but cultivated intellectuals – that there was a conspiracy to destroy France’s Catholic identity. The most easily identifiable enemies were the Jews, because many were rich and their talents had led to a disproportionate presence in the judiciary, the civil service, the press and even the army. Moreover, most came from Alsace, had Germanic names, and some, like Dreyfus, spoke with a German accent. (...) In most histories, the anti-Dreyfusards are indeed the villains, their anti-Semitism linked to the behaviour of the Vichy government during the Second World War, and hence to the Holocaust. In 1906, seven years after his pardon, Dreyfus was declared innocent by the French Court of Appeal, reinstated in the Army and awarded the Légion d’Honneur. He was never acquitted, as he had hoped, by his fellow officers in a court martial.

Creation Year:
c. 1894-1906
Dimensions:
Height: 22 in (55.88 cm)Width: 29.75 in (75.57 cm)
Medium:
Lithograph
Movement & Style:
Modern
Period:
1890-1899
Condition:
Some folds and creases.
Gallery Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU5182503103

La Clé de L'Affaire Dreyfus (The Decisive Evidence in the Dreyfus Affaire)

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