What was the rank of the French officer of Alsatian origin and of Jewish faith Alfred Dreyfus?
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Alfred Dreyfus was a French army captain, unjustly accused of treason in 1894 in what was to become one of the greatest judicial and political scandals in French history, known as the Dreyfus Affair.
Born in 1859 in Mulhouse, Alsace, Dreyfus belonged to a Jewish family that chose to remain French after the annexation of Alsace by the German Empire in 1871. He embarked on a military career at an early age, becoming an artillery officer and attending the École Polytechnique, before being promoted to captain in 1893.
At the time, France was experiencing a climate of political tension and strong anti-Semitism, particularly in nationalist and military circles. Against this backdrop, an anonymous document known as a bordereau was discovered by the French secret service, suspected of containing secret information passed on to Germany. Without solid proof, and because of prejudices linked to his Alsatian origin and Jewish faith, Dreyfus was accused of treason and tried by a military tribunal.
On December 22, 1894, he was sentenced to deportation for life, under extremely harsh conditions, to the Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana. However, doubts about his guilt soon arose, thanks in particular to the investigation of Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, who discovered that the real spy was Major Esterhazy. Despite these revelations, the army refused to acknowledge its error and sought to hush up the affair.
The Dreyfus affair took on a national dimension with the involvement of many intellectuals, including the writer Émile Zola, who in 1898 published his famous article J’accuse…! in the newspaper L’Aurore, denouncing a judicial and military machination. Public opinion was divided between Dreyfus supporters, who favored rehabilitation, and anti-Dreyfus supporters, who refused to question the authority of the army.
Under pressure, a new trial was organized in 1899, but despite the evidence in Dreyfus’s favor, he was convicted again. Under pressure from public opinion and French President Émile Loubet, he was finally granted a presidential pardon, although he was not yet officially cleared. It wasn’t until 1906 that he was rehabilitated, the Court of Cassation definitively overturning his conviction.
Back in the army, Dreyfus was promoted to squadron leader and took part in the First World War. He died in 1935, leaving behind an affair that profoundly affected the French Republic and led to major reforms in justice and freedom of opinion.
Today, the Dreyfus affair remains a symbol of miscarriage of justice, anti-Semitism and the struggle for truth and justice in a democracy.
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What was the rank of the French officer of Alsatian origin and of Jewish faith Alfred Dreyfus?
Answer
Alfred Dreyfus was a captain in the French army. Wrongly accused of espionage in 1894, he was at the heart of the Dreyfus Affair, a major legal scandal.