Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century

July 29, 2010 | By In Article |

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2 Comments so far

  1. N. Ravitch on July 29th, 2010

    The book jacket has praise from the usual suspects, three academic historians claiming this book adds something to our understanding of the Dreyfus Affair. But Professors Wolin, Seigel and Berenson are simply scratching one another’s backs and the back of a talented Anglo-American historian of French attitudes. Ruth Harris in previous work has specialized in the multifarious conflicts of French men and women whose political and social allegiances conceal the complexities of their real concerns and motives.

    Here she is principally concerned with the hidden motives and contradictions of those who sought and defended Alfred Dreyfus’ conviction for spying for Germany and those who sought to prove his innocence. Harris has taken this road in order to be able to claim having made a contribution since the importance and significance of the Dreyfus Affair is a settled fact by now. Yet the conclusions she draws are in my view of little importance. What is important is already common knowledge among historians, namely that the nationalistic Right in late 19th-Century France discovered what a wonderful use could be made of anti-Semitism to overcome the divisions in French society. The Left already know how useful anti-clericalism could be in overcoming other French divisions; they had been exploiting anti-clericalism for almost a century and again would use it for revenge against thr Right during and after the Dreyfus Affair. Indeed, the Left taught the Right how to find a unifying theme.

    Since even before the French Revolution France was polarized into the traditional Right vs. the radical Left. The Dreyfus Affair was just another episode; it also was a prelude to the last outbreak of civil strife among the French during the Vichy regime.

    Prof. Harris has a lot of interesting things to say but nothing of real value. Her preference for history as minutia is not everyone’s pleasure. Her opinions are usually correct if you care about them. She is very wrong about the traditional Catholic Leon Bloy; he was not an anti-semite as we understand the term and she misrepresents one of his most pungent comments about the Holy Eucharist. But no matter; we can at least applaud her attempt to uncover the more unlovely history of the otherwise admirable defenders of the innocent Dreyfus.

    People often wonder at the strength of anti-semitism in France. She says nothing about the cause of this but it is really obvious. France was the first European state to emancipate its Jews, something few Christians really desired or approved of. Thus potential opposition to Jews as aliens in the body politic is older in France than anywhere else.
    Rating: 3 / 5

  2. Paul Gelman on July 29th, 2010

    Ruth Harris has written one of most comprehensive and intriguing books about one of the best known episodes in the annals of France:The Dreyfus affair.In 1894,an officer in the French army,Captain Alfred Dreyfus,who was also a Jew,was sent to the Devil’s Island,after being wrongfully convicted of spying for the Germans.He was sentenced to life imprisonment and stripped of his military rank.All of this happened after a torn-up note containing confidential military information had accidentally been found by a cleaning lady in a wastepaper basket at the German embassy.As the family of Dreyfus despaired,help came from an unexpected quarter.It was Colonel Georges Picquart,a newly promoted intelligence officer,who discovered that the real spy was one Walsin Esterhazy,”a womanizer, a gambler and speculator.However,when Picquart attempted to convince his superiors that they had made a mistake,they set out to silence him and had him even imprisoned on charges of divulging military secrets and of forging documents”.(page 2)For a period of more than four years Dreyfus was languishing on the Island,sometimes shackled to his bed in sweltering heat,enclosed in a palisade so he could see nothing but the sky.A diet of scraps and rancid pork left him emaciated,his teeth rotted in his mouth and he all but lost the power of speech.He was not expected to last for long.His correspondence was heavily censored,and after he was brought back to France for retrial in 1899 he was not even aware of the campaign to clear his name-a campaign which had polarized the French nation during those times.There were two groups involved:the Dreyfusards and the anti-Dreyfusards.On July,1906,he was finally rehabilitated.He was awarded the highest military citation,readmitted to the army and died in 1935.

    The main parts of the book discuss and analyze these two rival camps and Harris provides the reader with deep insights into the psyche of those characters who peopled both camps.The trial was more than a Manichean battle and the intensity and obsession which it aroused is well described.The battle was not only ideological,and according to Harris was not only between the Left and the Right.It had much deeper roots and she rightly emphasizes the tremendous religious scope of the conflict,showing an intricate web of connections between personal feelings and political motivation.

    Harris also describes in detail the role played by the ever-supporting wife of Dreyfus,Lucie,who was the daughter of a wealthy diamond merchant and an Alsatian Jewess.Even the most antisemitic newspapers and anti-Dreyfusards had respect for her and she “was a model of motherly and wifely virtue utterly beyond reproach,a true wife and the essence of active virtue,a strong woman,loyal,energetic who inspires the deepest respect”.(page 268)Mathieu,the brother of Dreyfus assisted her while drawing support from many sources, among them a medium.

    The well-known episode of Zola writing his famous J’accuse” in 1898,which was addressed to President Faure,is dissected as well.Zola was not so keen about the whole matter in the beginning and after publishing his words,the French Minister of War sued Zola for libel,forcing him into exile in England.By now Walsin Esterhazy had effecctively been unmasked and fled to England where he made his confession to a number of newspapers.

    Harris gives a very detailed description of the fin-de-siecle French context,and she discusses the importance of religious beliefs as well as those of occult practices.

    The trial was regarded by the anti- Dreyfusards,i.d: the Catholic Church and the Army as Judas betraying Christ,while the Dreyfusards (mainly Jews and other prominent intellectuals) saw it in terms of Jesus=Dreyfus crucified.In addition,famous historical figures like Georges Clemenceau,Leon Blum and Jen Jaures were shocked when they realized that many left-leaning friends were not willing to join their cause.Harris offers her readers a profound look at the horrible,ugly antisemitism which was practiced in France by the majority of the French.One of the most famous and ludicrous characters was that of Eduard Drumont,who was obsessed by his father’s insanity,the Communards and other fears of degeneration;he managed to eat rats while trapped in Paris during the German siege.He equated the Jews with mice and vermin,and he saw a supposed link between Jews and Freemasons,seeing the latter ” as another subversive international that had provoked the Great Revolution and was now continuing its work of moral and social sabotage”.(pages 174-176).He strongly believed,like many other anti-Dreyfusards,that the Jews and Dreyfusards possessed diabolical powers,so much that he habitually carried around a mandrake to ward off evil.

    But the Dreyfusards were also preoccupied with religion as their opponents and even those who tended towards secularism,such as the Reinach brothers(discussed in detail),were keen to defend and distil the best of Judaism and show its compatibility with Republican ideology.Liberal Catholics denounced the Jesuits and hoped to liberate Dreyfus so that their intellectual version could triumph over the narrowly anti-intellectual ultramontanism they despised.

    In addition to the many letters discovered by Harris and written by Lucie,his wife,in which she is portrayed as a rare woman determined to do everything in order to free her husband and see justice done,the female angle and the role played by women during the whole affair are original elements which star in this exciting book.The opposing factions of intellectuals and anti-intellectuals were supported and,in some degree,shaped by the salonieres-those salons which were founded by various women.These salons provided a crucial venue for opinion-makes and members of the French political class to interact with one another and offered the elite a useful way to keep in touch with the tempestuous politics of the masses.One prominent saloniere was Genevieve Straus,the widow of the composer Georges Bizet,and whose many letters show the extent she was fighting for the Dreyfusard cause.

    The affair tore France apart and even to this day the sounds of this dark and ugly episode of French history-one of many others-are to be heard.Lucie changed her name during the Nazi occupation and fled Vichy to another free zone in the south while her granddaughter,Madeleine,who was a member of the French resistance,was sent to Auschwitz.

    Harris managed to show almost all the sides of this turbulent and complex affair in an admirable and exciting way which will linger in the minds of her readers for a very long time.She is careful not to link the anti-Dreyfusards with French fascism of the thirties and forties.Her extremely well-researched and documented book as well as her lively style prove that there are still a limited number of people who are academics and who can write for both the general public and the academic circles without letting them have even one moment of boredom!
    Rating: 5 / 5

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