Alfred Dreyfus ( , also , ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry from Alsace whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. The incident has gone down in history as the Dreyfus affair, the reverberations from which were felt throughout Europe. It ultimately ended with Dreyfus' complete exoneration.
Early life, family, and education
Born in Mulhouse, Alsace in 1859, to Raphaël and Jeannette Dreyfus (née Libmann), the youngest of nine children (seven of which survived to adulthood). His grandfather was a merchant from a long established Alsatian Jewish family in Rixheim, not far from Mulhouse. His father became a prosperous industrialist who started a cotton mill, then expanded the business with a weaving factory. This enabled the Dreyfus family to live a comfortable and affluent life within Mulhouse society. He spent his first years in a house on Rue de Sauvage, then later in a mansion on Rue de la Sinne, both in Mulhouse. Because of his mother's bedridden illness following his birth, his sister Henriette became like a second mother to him. Alfred was 10 years old when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in the summer of 1870, and following the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany after the war, he and his family moved to Basel, Switzerland, where he attended high school. The family later relocated to Paris.
Early career
The childhood experience of seeing his family uprooted by the war with Germany prompted Dreyfus to decide on a career in the military. Following his 18th birthday in October 1877, he enrolled in the elite military school in Paris, where he received military training and an education in the sciences. In 1880, he graduated and was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the French army. From 1880 to 1882, he attended the artillery school at Fontainebleau to receive more specialized training as an artillery officer. On graduation, he was assigned to the 31st Artillery Regiment, which was in the garrison at Le Mans. Dreyfus was subsequently transferred to a mounted artillery battery attached to the First Cavalry Division (Paris), and promoted to lieutenant in 1885. In 1889, he was made adjutant to the director of the Établissement de Bourges, a government arsenal, and promoted to captain.
On 18 April 1891, the 31-year-old Dreyfus married 20-year-old Lucie Eugénie Hadamard (1870–1945). They had two children, Pierre (1891–1946) and Jeanne (1893–1981). Three days after the wedding, Dreyfus learned that he had been admitted to the École Supérieure de Guerre or War College. Two years later, he graduated ninth in his class with honourable mention and was immediately designated as a trainee in the French Army's General Staff headquarters, where he would be the only Jewish officer. His father Raphaël died on 13 December 1893.
At the War College examination in 1892, his friends had expected him to do well. However, one of the members of the panel, General Bonnefond, felt that "Jews were not desired" on the staff, and gave Dreyfus poor marks for cote d'amour (French slang: attraction; translatable as likability). Bonnefond's assessment lowered Dreyfus' overall grade; he did the same to another Jewish candidate, Lieutenant Picard. Learning of this injustice, the two officers lodged a protest with the director of the school, General Lebelin de Dionne, who expressed his regret for what had occurred, but said he was powerless to take any steps in the matter. The protest would later count against Dreyfus. The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent, with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals. However, within the Fourth Bureau of the General Staff, General Bonnefond's prejudices appear to have been shared by some of the new trainee's superiors. The personal assessments received by Dreyfus during 1893/94 acknowledged his high intelligence, but were critical of aspects of his personality.
The Dreyfus affair
A torn-up handwritten note, referred to throughout the affair as the bordereau, was found by a French housekeeper, a woman named Marie Bastian, in a wastebasket at the German Embassy. Bastian, whose job was to burn the waste of Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen, instead sent it to Hubert-Joseph Henry for potential interest to French intelligence. The bordereau described a minor French military secret, and had obviously been written by a spy in the French military.