After three years out of the public eye and six in a little-publicized corner of the Tuileries Gardens, the statue was eventually moved to a prominent site on the Boulevard Raspail on Paris’ Left Bank on the 100th anniversary of Dreyfus’ first conviction.Įven today, said Charles Dreyfus, Alfred’s grandson, some French “still think that it would have been better to sacrifice the life of a man, though innocent, rather than undermine what they regard as the honor of the army.”Īnti-Semitism in France also continues to revive memories of the Dreyfus affair. But the minister of defense refused to allow it to be displayed because the French army wanted no public reminders of the embarrassing affair. Sculpted by the late Louis Mitelberg, it was supposed to stand in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire, where a humiliated Dreyfus was striped of his captain’s rank. In 1985, the socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand commissioned a statue of Dreyfus. Soon after, the National Assembly’s Chamber of Deputies returned Dreyfus to the army, promoting the former captain to major and awarding him the Legion of Honor.īut the Dreyfus affair still periodically roils French politics. Then, in 1906, the high court threw out Dreyfus’ second conviction and, distrustful of the generals, refused to order another trial. Although he accepted the pardon, Dreyfus continued to accumulate evidence of his innocence. When the High Court of Appeals overturned Dreyfus’ conviction, the army simply tried and convicted him again. More than 300,000 copies of the paper were sold, and French public sentiment began swinging to Dreyfus’ side. Zola’s attack ran across the front page under the headline “J’Accuse” in enormous type. 13, 1898, in the newspaper L’Aurore, the novelist detailed Dreyfus’ unjust conviction and the French army’s coverup. In an open letter to the French president, published Jan. Marcel Proust used the bickering and backbiting in French society over the affair as background noise in his monumental “In Search of Lost Time.”īut it was Emile Zola who struck the most stirring and telling blow for Dreyfus. The ranks of the anti-Dreyfusards were equally formidable, among them Edgar Degas, Paul Cezanne, Auguste Rodin and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Among the Dreyfusards were Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Paul Signac and Mary Cassatt. The Dreyfus affair split French society, pitting artist against artist, intellectual against intellectual. Georges Picquart submitted irrefutable evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence, he was told, “What does it matter to you that this Jew remains on Devil’s Island”? They refused to admit their error out of fear that such an admission would besmirch the French army’s honor and undercut its fighting ability. Most French generals soon realized they convicted the wrong man. He was the “model citizen defending his right to justice,” Duclert writes, “and he was the model patriot never doubting the capacity of his country to move toward justice and truth.” In a new biography, Vincent Duclert contends that Dreyfus was not afraid to stand up for himself. Indeed, some historians see Dreyfus the patriot, not Dreyfus the victim. But on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his exoneration in 1906 and the official end of the tumultuous affair that convulsed France for a dozen years, that view may be changing.
His decision to accept a pardon is one of the cornerstones of a long-standing French perception that Dreyfus is the model of a submissive victim. “We were prepared to die for Dreyfus,” said poet Charles Peguy, “but Dreyfus was not.” Those who believed that he was innocent and had called for his exoneration were deeply disappointed. It was a matter of life or death, for Dreyfus feared that he would not survive the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island, where he had been sent after a military court convicted him of betraying his country. IN 1899, A BROKEN Alfred Dreyfus accepted a presidential pardon - and its implication that he had committed treason against France.
0 kommentar(er)
