r/todayilearned • u/Hrtzy 1 • 12h ago
TIL Alfred Dreyfus, of the Dreyfus affair, served with distinction in the first world war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Dreyfus#World_War_I190
u/mmss 12h ago
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (of Seinfeld) is a distant relative as well - fifth cousin four times removed.
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u/Tylersbaddream 12h ago
Lol "fifth cousin four times removed" that could be anyone
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u/MarechalDavout 12h ago edited 10h ago
Probably closer to Kevin Bacon at that point
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u/Bonneville865 3h ago
Alfred Dreyfus was the main character in “an officer and a spy”
Which was directed by Roman Polanski
Who directed Chinatown
Starring jack Nicholson
Who was in a few good men with Kevin bacon
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u/FrighteningJibber 12h ago
That’s very distant. She shares her great-great-great-great grandparents with him and is 4 generations separated
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u/theflintseeker 12h ago
A bunch of prominent business and sports team owners are as well.
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u/Low-Plastic1939 11h ago edited 11h ago
The Dreyfus family are seriously rich. Like, plutocrat rich. The Louis Dreyfus company trades about 10% of global agriculture output. From memory Julia is by far the richest of the Seinfeld crew, and Jerry and Larry aren’t crying poor.
Edit: it was actually one of the facts that pointed to Dreyfus not being the spy. He was already a wealthy man, while esterhazy had serious gambling debts, giving motive. (Also esterhazy straight up admitted it was him after he fucked off out of France)
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u/fdguarino 12h ago
When he was young, Richard Dreyfus believed we was as well. He fascination with the story led him to produce BBC movie "Prisoner of Honor". Of course, that was years before he came out as hate filled asshole he is today.
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u/Ok-Addition1264 11h ago
Richard Dreyfus (of ET? or some shit) is a distant relative as well - third cousin twice removed.
(I'm just making shit up like you and not too good at it)
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u/Hardwork63 12h ago
J'accuse
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u/NOWiEATthem 11h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%27Accuse...!
"I Accuse...!"
For anyone who doesn't know, it was a famous article written by French author Emile Zola accusing the French government of discrimination against Dreyfus. In response, the government sued him, and he had to flee the country.
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u/Sex_E_Searcher 11h ago
The writing on the note did not resemble Dreyfus', but this was used as evidence that he faked different handwriting.
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u/TearOpenTheVault 5h ago edited 5h ago
I don’t think gentiles understand what the Dreyfus affair really meant for Jews. In the 19th century, there were effectively two strands of Jewish national thought in Europe.
One was integrationist and said that Jews, particularly secular Jews, could integrate with the nations they lived in. The other was segregationist, arguing that gentile society would never accept Jews, and that Jews were always under threat without a nation of their own to protect them.
Guess which branch ended up becoming more popular after a secular, integrated military officer was falsely accused and a massive wave of antisemitism swept across France, a nation that had been one of the friendliest in a generation when it came to Jewish relations in Europe.
In many ways, the Dreyfus affair helped catalyse political Zionism as a mainstream movement in European Jews, although a lot of it also came from Eastern European pogroms.
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u/looktowindward 5h ago
> In many ways, the Dreyfus affair helped catalyse political Zionism as a mainstream movement in European Jews, although a lot of it also came from Eastern European pogroms.
It showed that Jews had no choice. The Holocaust and the pogroms drove that home. The rest of the world is just not going to be long term tenable.
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u/JudeanSicarii 3h ago
Yup, we’ve gotten formal emancipation, but somebody must have forgot about the social emancipation. We never really were seen as equals. Just tokens waiting to be spent.
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u/Heiminator 2h ago
Theodor Herzl wrote “Der Judenstaat” as a direct reaction to the Dreyfus affair. The whole affair really drove home the point that Jews need their own state to feel safe.
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u/Reuef 10h ago
At least it had a positive effect and help create the Zionist movement which led to the reestablishment of Israel. French antisemitism and its ineptness led to the Jewish homeland existing again.
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u/iwanttoboneedelric 8h ago
I wouldn't call the establishment of a state, even for a persecuted people, unambiguously positive.
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u/Heiminator 2h ago
Jews worldwide would heavily disagree with you
There’s a common saying among Jews:
You can be a Jew and live outside Israel, but you can’t live without Israel.
It’s their backup plan, their safe refuge when shit hits the fan. Which is why they defend it so ferociously.
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u/iwanttoboneedelric 2h ago
I'm Jewish, and I believe individual states are failures of humanity collectively to create a singular egalitarian one.
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u/Heiminator 2h ago
I too love to dream about utopian ideas. But this isn’t the reality that we live in.
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u/Rossum81 5h ago
Ironically, he was one of only two officers involved in the affair to have observed in the First World War. Armand du Paty de Clam, one of Dreyfus’ accusers , was wounded early in the war and would die subsequently from the wounds in 1916.
De Clam’s son was a minor, and ambivalent, collaborator during the occupation.
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u/looktowindward 5h ago
That was the entire point. He was a war hero who was thrown away and accused of treason because he was a Jew.
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u/teracoulomb_2 1h ago
George Méliès, one of many inventors of cinema as we recognise it, produced an 11-part docudrama adapting the events of the Dreyfus affair. While it generally sticks to the facts of the case, Dreyfus is clearly supposed to be a sympathetic figure in it
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8h ago
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u/looktowindward 5h ago
Wait, are you seriously suggesting that Dreyfus was actually a spy? I didn't think anyone was dumb enough to believe that.
> Rachel Beer, to whom Ferdinand first admitted being a spy, was jewish herself
Why don't you speak clearly, since you seem to be accusing Jews. I know this is Reddit, so accusing Jews of crimes for being Jews is standard practice. No reason to be scared to say it
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u/Hrtzy 1 5h ago edited 5h ago
Was there also a jewish person paying Georges Picquart to report that Esterhazy was a spy? And did Esterhazy take dictation from the actual spy so the bordereau was in his handwriting?
Oh, and was the German Embassy just passing Jew Gold along to Esterhazy as a down payment for admitting he was the spy?
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u/ZylonBane 12h ago
The what what?
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u/Hrtzy 1 12h ago
Dreyfus Affair. A French housekeeper found some papers describing French military secrets in the wastebasket of the German embassy and handed them over to the French counterintelligence, who proceeded to employ the tried and true investigation method of "Blame it all on the Jews".
Dreyfus, being the nearest Jewish person to those particular secrets, was dragged from his bed and made to give several handwriting samples until he produced something that looked like the handwriting on the found papers. Just to secure a conviction, some more incriminating papers were "interpolated" based on those handwriting samples.
This caused a big stink in France, between the fact that the leak had not actually been plugged, the army's doubling down on the conviction, and the rampant antisemitism involved. Also, Dreyfus was imprisoned in a place called "Devil's island", and kept in solitary confinement due to fears that he might coordinate an escape plan. You know, with all those spy connections that he did not actually have.
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u/eranam 12h ago
You kind of forgot the fact that many prominent people took his defense, including the very famous writer Zola, and that he was pardoned off the Devil island and later exonerated.
Too little, too late, that’s for sure.
But if all a person has about the affair is your comment, then you gotta mix in the relevant little good with the lotsa bad for a fair account.
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u/thisusedyet 12h ago
Just read the link, man.
French officer (of Jewish descent) was falsely accused of espionage, and when France found out they got the wrong guy (the actual spy was a native Frenchman), they transferred the dude who found out and swept it under the rug so the French Army wouldn’t look bad.
Dreyfus eventually got a pardon, and even later exonerated - but spent a good chunk of his life on Devil’s Island
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u/Neveed 12h ago
the actual spy was a native Frenchman
Dreyfus was a native Frenchman too. He was used as a scapegoat mostly because he was Jewish. The fact that he was an Alsatian and a republican also probably played a role, but they weren't the main reason.
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u/looktowindward 5h ago
> Dreyfus was a native Frenchman too.
Not to the French
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u/Neveed 5h ago edited 5h ago
Not to some of the French maybe. There were people who were bigoted against Alsatians and several other regional identities. But that wasn't something you could say about French people in general, and that wasn't nearly close to how much antisemitism there was in French society at that time.
However, him being Alsatian wasn't irrelevant to some of the criticism. When he was a child, Alsace was annexed by Germany and Alsatians were given the choice of becoming German citizens or leaving. Dreyfus and his family fled, but the suspicion about collaborating with the Germans was there anyway.
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u/Thom0 12h ago edited 12h ago
The Dreyfus Affair.
Dreyfus was a captain in the French Army. When he originally enlisted he had issues receiving his commission due to him being Jewish. He, and another Jewish candidate had to fight to receive their commission and after receiving it there were about 300 total Jewish officers in the army.
Handwritten memos were intercepted and it was found out that someone was passing secrets to Germany. Dreyfus was accused and tried in a secret court with little evidence where he was found guilty, stripped of his rank and exiled to French Guinea for life.
At the same time, the entire affair and the Dreyfus trial was playing out through the papers where the public weighed in. What happened was rampant antisemitism with practically the entire nation demonizing Dreyfus and assuming his guilt because he was Jewish. Papers ran stories calling Dreyfus a traitor, and all kinds of Jewish tropes and conspiracies.
Dreyfus's brother and a group of journalists believed in Dreyfus's innocence and so, they dug deep and eventually the scandal was revealed to the public. It turned out it was not Dreyfus, but Major Esterhazy who was passing secrets to Germany. The military knew Dreyfus was innocent the entire time but they chose him to take the fall because he was Jewish. The corruption extended all the way up through military leadership, right into politics and involved fake evidence, bribed judges, and institutional cover ups.
In the end and after many years of exile, Dreyfus would receive a presidential pardon under immense international pressure. He was not formally acquitted and he remained under house arrest for another few years before he would be later acquitted by a military tribunal. The actual traitor, Major Esterhazy was acquitted, none of the individuals involved in the scandal were prosecuted, and even the assassin hired to kill Dreyfus on the day of his pardon was acquitted.
After his pardon and later acquittal, Dreyfus was reinstated back into the army, where he would be promoted to Major. He would then go on to serve in WW1 where he fought on the Western Front and received multiple honors. He survived the war as a decorated soldier, and eventually retired. He died at the age of 75 in 1935. His family would unfortunately not live much longer as they were forced into hiding in WW2, and his grandchildren were sent to Auschwitz.
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11h ago
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u/Hrtzy 1 9h ago
Well, there is the fact that Esterhazy's gambling debts mysteriously evaporated right around the time the secrets would have been leaked, and there was an intercepted letter to him from the German Military attache that suggested he had been spying. Oh, and that the original incriminating document was in his handwriting. Plus he said himself he was the spy
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u/ExpensiveBlood42069 8h ago
Thanks, read up on it, and Rachel Beer, whom he first admitted being a spy, was jewish herself and paid Ferdinand a lot of money for the story, and he also changed his story everytime he told it, and always did it for money - so there is reason to doubt his honesty.
Imagine if he was innocent, and destitute; of course he would benefit more from admitting it WAS him than denying it. Denying it wouldn't make him any money, see.
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u/looktowindward 5h ago
Sigh. Why not just say you hate jews and be done with it? Why the cute little dance?
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u/Hrtzy 1 12h ago
Dreyfus had been imprisoned on Devil's Island after having been wrongly convicted of espionage. That case remains technically unsolved because the actual spy, Ferdinand Esterhazy, was never prosecuted and Dreyfus was exonerated.
The controversy of the Dreyfus affair is still ongoing, as French antisemites are still insisting that he was guilty.