Dreyfus Affair Facts for Kids

Emile Zola published a famous letter J'Accuse to complain that the government of France had been very unfair to Alfred Dreyfus.

The Dreyfus Affair was one of the biggest scandals in the history of France. It happened at the end of the 19th century. It was about Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army.

In 1894, Dreyfus was accused of being a spy, and accused of crimes against France. People thought he wrote letters to the Germans telling them about secrets of the French army.

His punishment was to be sent to a prison island in South America for the rest of his life.

When he was in prison, people (mostly his brother Mathieu and a high-ranking officer called Picquart) thought he was innocent. They proved that another soldier, Major Esterhazy, was guilty. But the army did not want to admit that it had been wrong. They refused to free him. Finally, the evidence that Dreyfus was innocent became so strong that the government had to demand a new trial. At the new trial, the army again found him guilty. The President of France, who did not want an innocent man to suffer any more, pardoned Dreyfus in 1899.

Dreyfus was released. Seven years later, he was officially declared innocent, and allowed back into the army.

The affair divided France into people who thought Dreyfus really was a spy and people who thought he was innocent. Many of those who thought Dreyfus was a spy hated Jews and believed that he was a criminal because he was a Jew, and that a Jew could not be a good Frenchman; this belief is called anti-Semitism. Others thought that the army could not be questioned. The other side believed that an innocent man should not be imprisoned, and feared that Dreyfus's enemies were also enemies of France.

Images for kids

Alfred Dreyfus
Dreyfus affair board game, 1898, Poster, 65 x 48 cm, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaisme
General Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre, architect of the military alliance with Russia
Photograph of the bordereau dated 13 October 1894. The original disappeared in 1940
General Auguste Mercier, Minister of War in 1894
Major du Paty de Clam, head of investigation, arrested Captain Dreyfus
Alphonse Bertillon was not a handwriting expert, but he invented the theory of "autoforgery"
Cover of Le Petit Journal, 20 January 1895 (illustration by Fortuné Méaulle after Lionel Royer).
From Le Petit Journal (23 December 1894).
Max von Schwartzkoppen always claimed never to have known Dreyfus
Dreyfus's officer stripes, ripped off as a symbol of treason – Museum of Jewish Art and History
Dreyfus's Hut on Devil's Island in French Guiana
Le Petit Journal (27 September 1896)
Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart dressed in the uniform of the 4th Algerian Tirailleurs
Émile Zola in 1898
Portrait of Georges Clemenceau by the painter Édouard Manet
Newspaper showing Esterhazy
Henry de Groux, Zola faces the mob, oil on canvas, 1898
Antisemitic riots in a print from Le Petit Parisien
Photograph of the "faux Henry". The header ("my dear friend") and signature ("Alexandrine") are from Panizzardi. The rest is from the hand of Henry.
Portrait of Godefroy Cavaignac, Minister of War
Drawing by Caran d'Ache in Le Figaro on 14 February 1898.
Alfred Dreyfus (standing, right of centre) at the opening session of his trial in Rennes, photographed by Valerian Griboedov
Alfred Dreyfus's trial at the Rennes Court Martial
Dreyfus's defense in Rennes: Edgar Demange and Fernand Labori
Dreyfus's reconviction
Colonel Albert Jouaust, Chairman of the Court Martial, reads the verdict of conviction, in one of the weekly Le Monde illustré.
The funeral of Zola, where Anatole France paid homage to his friend
Manuel Baudoin, attorney general at the heart of the rehabilitation of Dreyfus
At right, Captain Alfred Dreyfus rehabilitated at Les Invalides, talks with General Gillain. In the centre, Targe, investigator and discoverer of many falsehoods.
Alfred Dreyfus in 1935, the year of his death.
Family of Félix Vallotton in Le Cri de Paris. The Dreyfus Affair lastingly cut France in two, even within families.
Theodor Herzl created the Zionist Congress after the Dreyfus affair.
The statue of Captain Dreyfus in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, home of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
List of documents in the French National Archives related to the Dreyfus affair and given by the ministry of Justice.
First brochure of A Miscarriage of Justice, Bernard Lazare published in 1896 in Brussels

Dreyfus Affair facts for kids

Images for kids

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