The Dreyfus Affair

by Joe Fenton

Often in literature we can find events of the contemporary world of the author displayed in such an original context that we arrive at a clearer understanding of the incidents themselves. One such case is that of Alfred Dreyfus, an encompassing undercurrent throughout the various salons and sceneries of Marcel Proust's work. To be or not to be a Dreyfussard denoted not merely a knowledge of the events of the time, not merely a sense of the depths of anti-Semitism, but further showed patriotic bias "in the name of France" or a Republican sentiment, which is displayed all the more potently for its appearance in the parlors of the waning royalty.

Dreyfusism divided France, not abstractly, but on a personal and individual level, with arguments, broken relationships, shunned greetings and moments of awkward silence, as seen in Proust. All this leaves us with a brilliant picture of the overall social tension, but does little to explain in any depth the actual cases of Dreyfus, Zola, Count Esterhazy, and Colonel Henry, whose names pop out at us in passing conversations and attitudes.

Alfred Dreyfus was a career army officer from a good Jewish family of the Alsace region of France/Germany. This area, full of industry and commerce, was a source of constant sedition between the two countries and was, when Alfred was a child, taken by the Germans in the war of 1870. Although the Dreyfus family holdings were left intact, Alfred Dreyfus was asked to leave the now-German region because of his desire to be a French officer.

In Paris, Dreyfus attended the Ecole Polytechnique where he did quite well for himself, even buffeting the waves of anti-Jewish sentiment that rippled through France in the early days of the Third Republic. In these years, many of the French Officer Corp were Royalists, having been in the army, and saw themselves as separate from the changes in government and the debacle of early Third Republic politics. Dreyfus was certainly an officer of this character, but not in the sense of being a Royalist, only in the sense of being devoted to his life as a soldier and his honor as an officer.

Back from Devil's Island in 1899, Dreyfus was again tried before a French Army court-martial, this time at Rennes. Two of his lawyers are at right.