Emile Zola's "J'accuse" and the Dreyfus affair@Dreyfus affair@(BE)@vorankündigung

A brief overview of the Dreyfus Affair

The origins of the Affair can be traced to the late summer of 1894, when the counter-espionage unit of the French army intelligence service (known as the "Statistics Section") found a letter in the wastepaper basket of Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen (1850–1917), military attaché at the German embassy in Paris. This letter, which became known as the bordereau, promised to put into German hands confidential documents pertaining to national defence (concerning, among other things, a 120 mm artillery gun as well as changes to artillery training and firing protocol). Following a less than scrupulously conducted investigation, which hinged on a rather questionable analysis of the handwriting used, the bordereau was attributed to Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935), a captain in the French artillery, who was duly arrested on 15 October 1894.

The arrest of a Jewish officer was reported in more or less dramatic tones by both the nationalist press (La Libre Parole, Le Matin, La Patrie) and the comparatively neutral Figaro, leaving the minister of war, General Auguste Mercier (1833–1921), feeling compelled to urge the quick trial and sentencing of the (alleged) culprit. In Alfred Dreyfus, the general staff offered him the perfect traitor at a time of revanchism and increasing nationalism: Dreyfus came from Alsace, was Jewish and, at the time of his arrest, a trainee in the French general staff. A secret court martial convened to try him on 19 December 1894. Since, however, several of the military judges found the documentary evidence to be inconclusive, the guilty verdict desired by the military leadership was finally secured by a secret dossier which was unknown to the defence and contained a letter referring to "ce canaille de D." – an individual never positively identified but certainly not Dreyfus. The military thus flagrantly and deliberately scorned the rule of law. On 22 December Dreyfus received the maximum penalty for high treason – cashiering and deportation for life – and in March 1895 was transported to Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana[].

A year and a half later Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart (1854–1914), the new head of counter-intelligence, identified Major Charles-Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy (1847–1923) as the bordereau's actual author []. For making this unwelcome discovery, Picquart was quickly shunted off to a post in North Africa. Only a further year and a half later, following the publication of documents clearly compromising him, was Walsin-Esterhazy brought before a court martial, which acquitted him on 11 January 1898. This was the final straw that compelled Emile Zola (1840–1902) to write his celebrated open letter to Félix Faure (1841–1899), the president of the French Republic. From that moment on, debates centred on a retrial for Dreyfus, with the "Dreyfus Case" merging into the "Zola Affair". However, this also meant that the fate of Dreyfus himself sometimes received less attention than questions of principle concerning, for instance, the relation between justice and reason of state.

Several factors explain how such a flagrant perversion of justice was able to occur, beginning with the earlier crises and scandals of the Third Republic: the failed coup by General Georges Boulanger (1837–1891) (1889), the Panama Affair (1892) and anarchist attacks (1893/94). A second factor was the position of the army, which enjoyed a quasi-sacred status as the guarantor of a future revenge for defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1870 and the subsequent loss of Alsace-Lorraine. The army led something of a life of its own within the French nation, cultivating its own rituals and an attitude of contempt towards republican politicians. Its counter-intelligence unit was of particular importance in this connection. It was placed directly under the control of the deputy chief of the general staff, Charles Arthur Gonse (1838–1917), and as the affair began was run by Major Jean Sandherr (1846–1897), a graduate of the Saint-Cyr military academy, an Alsatian and anti-Semite, who owed his position to the patronage of General Boulanger as minister of war. One task of the Section des statistiques was to keep a (discreet) eye on the foreign military attachés accredited in Paris, particularly of course those of the Triple Alliance of Germany (Lieutenant-Colonel Max von Schwartzkoppen), Italy (Alessandro Panizzardi (1853­–1928)) and Austria-Hungary (Major Schneider). Not to be underestimated, finally, is the role of a growing – and increasingly ideologically charged – anti-Semitism, exemplified by the success of Edouard Drumont's (1844–1917) book La France juive (1886) and his daily La Libre Parole, launched in 1892. Pressure on the government from the nationalist and antisemitic press proved a decisive factor, as L'Intransigeant, Le Matin, La Libre Parole, La Patrie, Le Petit Journal and Le Petit Parisien enjoyed a far larger circulation and readership than the papers supporting Dreyfus (initially, briefly, Le Figaro and then above all L'Aurore, Le Siècle and Le Temps as well as La Fronde and Les Droits de l'homme, which were founded only as the affair progressed).

Emile Zola's involvement

Emile Zola was not among those who supported Dreyfus from the beginning. Only in the autumn of 1897 – once he had completed his "Three Cities" trilogy (Lourdes, Rome, Paris) – did he allow himself to be persuaded of Dreyfus's innocence. Three interlocutors were instrumental in converting Zola to the Dreyfusard cause: the poet Bernard Lazare (1865–1903), who had already published two pamphlets in defence of Dreyfus, Louis Leblois (1854–1928), Picquart's lawyer, and Auguste Scheurer-Kestner (1833–1899), the vice-president of the French senate. In his first article on the subject, which appeared on 25 November in Le Figaro and was dedicated to "Monsieur Scheurer-Kestner",¹ Zola defended the campaign Scheurer-Kestner had launched in the senate for a retrial of Dreyfus. There followed, at short intervals, two further articles – "Le syndicat" ("the syndicate", Le Figaro, 1 December 1897) and "Procès-verbal" ("report of proceedings", Le Figaro, 5 December 1897) – in which Zola sought to outline the affair against its ideological and political backdrop. In the former, he demolished the legend of the supposed "Jewish syndicate" with biting irony, while in the latter, he took open issue with the anti-Semitism of the press and its "shameful exploitation of patriotism". When sections of the Figaro's conservative readership threatened to cancel their subscriptions, Zola was forced to continue his campaign through pamphlets produced by his publisher, Fasquelle. Lettre à la jeunesse ("letter to the youth") and Lettre à la France ("Letter to France") are appeals to reason which set the tone for "J'accuse", addressed to President Félix Faure, with which Zola responded to Walson-Esterhazy's acquittal on 11 January.

This open "letter to the president of the republic" appeared on the front page of the daily L'Aurore on 13 January 1889. It was Zola's personal account of the affair, building on his previous articles and culminating in a tirade in which he accused the highest authorities of state and army of perverting the course of justice. The letter's celebrated title – "I accuse" – derives from this final section.

Zola was well aware that he was placing himself in a dangerous position. As he put it himself at the end of his list of charges:

In making these accusations I am fully aware that my action comes under Articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29 July 1881 on the press, which makes libel a punishable offence. I deliberately expose myself to that risk. … I have but one goal: that light be shed, in the name of mankind which has suffered so much and has the right to happiness. … Let them dare to summon me before a court of law! Let the inquiry be held in broad daylight! I am waiting.²

The effect of this daring act was considerable. The circulation of L'Aurore increased tenfold, with the edition containing Zola's letter selling somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 copies.³

As a work of journalism, "J'accuse...!" was a collective effort. Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), the politician and lawyer who at the time was editor of L'Aurore, was aware of the forthcoming publication, as was its proprietor, Ernest Vaughan (1841–1929), for it was the paper itself which was legally responsible for the material it published. It was Clemenceau who, picking up on Zola's repeated formula, selected it as the letter's headline. He also foresaw the trouble that the article was likely to cause. The government's response came swiftly. On 18 January the council of ministers decided that the minister of war would bring a charge of libel against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, managing director of L'Aurore, at the Seine court of assizes. Zola had not, however, expected that the government would attempt to keep the charge of libel separate from the Dreyfus affair. Yet the libel case concerned only three short passages that were thought "apt to question the honour of the military governor of Paris" in relation to the acquittal of Walsin-Esterhazy by the court martial of 10/11 January 1898. The plaintiffs thereby sought to keep the Dreyfus affair out of the trial of Zola and L'Aurore. As a result, the presiding judge repeatedly overruled questions put by the defence concerning the Dreyfus case. Yet the government's tactic ultimately failed in its goal of treating Zola's claims in isolation from the Dreyfus affair.

The trial lasted two weeks (7–23 February) and gave rise to passionate debates. An impassioned Zola addressed the jury on 21 February, restating his innermost conviction: "Dreyfus is innocent, that I swear. I swear it by my life, by my honour." Zola's lawyer, Labori, pleaded his case over three sessions. (21–23 February), followed by a shorter address from Clemenceau. The verdict was announced on the evening of 23 February. Perrenx was sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine of 3000 francs; Zola to one year's imprisonment and 3000 francs. The verdict was not yet, however, legally binding.

After the trial, Zola retired to his country residence in Médan. The petitions (18) signed by several hundred "intellectuals" and published in L'Aurore could not conceal the fact that Zola's partisanship for Dreyfus and his sentence for libel provided a welcome opportunity for large sections of the French public to settle scores with the successful, if ill-liked, naturalist author. It became apparent that Dreyfusards were a minority in France, even among the intellectuals.

Following the events of February 1898 and the extraordinary nervous strain they had imposed on him, Zola sought to keep out of the spotlight. Although he had courted the trial, he had not predicted the legal ramifications it would entail. The initial judgement having been first overturned on a technicality and then repeated by the appellate court, in July 1898 Zola followed the urging of his friends and associates to go into exile in England, there to await the hoped-for appeal in the case of Dreyfus himself. Yet more than a year later, in September 1899, the verdict against Dreyfus was confirmed. This time, however, he was pardoned by President Emile Loubet (1838–1929)[]. Zola, who already had returned from exile in June, was among those in the Dreyfusard camp who, though they were angry at this rotten compromise, understood why Dreyfus ultimately accepted it. Zola concluded his campaign on behalf of Dreyfus with a further five open letters in L'Aurore. "Justice" appeared on 5 June 1899, the date of his return from England, and "Le Cinquième Acte" on 12 September in response to the confirmation of the verdict against Dreyfus by the court martial in Rennes. On 22 September, in "Lettre à Madame Alfred Dreyfus", Zola expressed his understanding for Dreyfus's acceptance of the pardon. Finally, the letters "Lettre au Sénat" (29 May 1900) and "Lettre au Président de la République" (22 December 1900) were inspired by the debates over the amnesty pardoning all those involved in the affair, bringing Zola's involvement in the matter to a bitterly ironic conclusion.

Among all Zolas writings on the Affair, "J'accuse...!" took pride of place. The open letter was founded both on convictions that that were reiterated in the manner of a creed and on the careful observation of actual events, which Zola analysed in their chronological sequence. Certain inaccuracies and minor errors in points of detail – for instance, Zola's misreading of the role of Lieutenant-Colonel Armand du Paty de Clam (1853–1916) in relation to that of Major Hubert Henry (1846–1898) – simply reflected the information available to the Dreyfusards at the time. In any case, this was not the decisive point. The great achievement of "J'accuse" was to have offered a clear account of the highly convoluted Affair, thereby facilitating its public discussion. As Léon Blum, who would go on to lead the Socialist Party, remarked in his article "Le Procès" (La Revue blanche, 15 March 1898): "Zola may be have erred in the interpretation of particular facts. But who could deny that his overall account had not been verified and proved by the court's proceedings?".⁴

Reactions in the press

No more than the impact of Dreyfus Affair would Zola's involvement in it have been conceivable without the medium of the press. It was not least as a media event that the Affair took on an international dimension as early as autumn 1894. Coverage in both the French and international press peaked between the late autumn of 1897 and September 1899, with Zola's "J'accuse" – or at least excerpts from it – appearing in many foreign newspapers. Nearly all papers, regardless of their political affiliation, gave the events that unfolded in the course of the affair a good deal of space.

Since this is not the place for a comprehensive survey of press reactions, those of the German-language newspapers may serve as an example.⁵ The German press took an obvious interest in the story because its nationalist counterparts in France (notably Le Matin and L'Intransigeant) claimed from the outset that Dreyfus had been spying for Germany. With regard to this accusation, most German papers adhered to the German government's official line, which held that the Dreyfus Affair was a purely French matter, of no concern to Germany. This was true as far as Dreyfus was concerned, but it did not correspond to the facts regarding Walsin-Esterhazy. The reception and interpretation of the affair in Germany were thus strongly influenced by the Franco-German antagonism. This centuries-old conflict took on a new dimension with the proclamation of the Third Republic in 1871, which gave rise to highly contradictory reactions in Germany. For many Germans, especially those of national-liberal and republican convictions, France was now both an enemy and a model. Something similar, albeit in a weaker form, was true of Austria-Hungary. Indeed, France was not only a "republican" but especially a "cultural" model, and French literature – above all Zola – was held in high esteem throughout the German-speaking lands.

While the Affair was thus covered by newspapers of all political allegiances, the interpretation and evaluation which the events received was naturally coloured by their respective ideological positions. In simplified terms, the papers divided into a right-wing/conservative and a liberal camp. Eckhardt and Günter Fuchs have examined the uses to which the Affair was put by various political projects in a study of the Berlin press. They focus on four aspects: the debate over the form of government (republic or monarchy), the role of anti-Semitism, historical symbolism (France being the land of the Revolution and of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) and nationalism.⁶

The right-wing/conservative press – which included the strongly anti-Semitic Staatsbürgerzeitung, Das Reich, the Catholic Germania and the Protestant Neue Preußische Zeitung (Kreuzzeitung) in Germany or the Deutsches Volksblatt and the Reichspost in Austria – treated the Affair as an opportunity to spread a negative image of France and above all to criticise the republican form of government. The strength of the monarchy was set against the supposed weakness of the republic (France at the time being the only such state among the great powers of Europe) and the Franco-German antagonism was played up. For instance, on 1 July 1899, the Deutsches Wochenblatt, which was close to the government, described France as a "sick country" whose existence was threatened by the republican element. An editorial in the paper appealed to the "moral resistance" of a conservative and nationally minded French public which would do away with the republic. Anti-Semitism was more or less pronounced among these papers. The Neue Preußische Zeitung, for instance, found French anti-Semitism to be inseparable from anti-Germanism and therefore to be rejected,⁷ while the more overtly anti-Semitic papers, such as the Vienna Deutsches Volksblatt, used the Affair to reinforce their own anti-Semitic propaganda, portraying Dreyfus's defenders as agitators beholden to an international Jewish syndicate. Where it was not possible to brand Dreyfusards as Jews themselves – not least Zola – it was implied that they had been heavily bribed (the anti-Semitic Kikeriki, which described itself as a "humoristic popular paper", enjoyed portraying Zola as a pig). Such papers either asserted Dreyfus's guilt or upheld the argument, much used by the French anti-Dreyfusards, of autorité de la chose jugée, which meant refusing to question the verdict of a court-martial. No opportunity was missed to smear those arguing in favour of a retrial of Dreyfus – again, Zola in particular – with moralising arguments of a questionable kind. The Deutsches Volksblatt called the novelist a "pornographer" and "pornologist" [sic], one "who enjoyed wallowing in filth, such that any decent reader must soon lay his books aside in disgust" (17 February 1898),⁸ thereby adopting well-worn clichés of conservative literary criticism.

The most influential and highest-circulation papers in the Wilhelmine empire at the time were undoubtedly the liberal dailies. Though they too were usually unsparing in their criticism of conditions in France, they tended to treat the Affair rather as a conflict between two conceptions of the state (in which the campaign for a retrial serves as a campaign for upholding republican values) and as a symptom of anti-Semitism. Of particular importance is the role played by the Frankfurter Zeitung, a left-liberal daily and surely the German paper with the greatest international reputation at the time. No other German paper devoted as much editorial space to the Dreyfus Affair; only the Vienna Neue Freie Presse offered comparable coverage. Paul Goldmann (1865–1935), the Frankfurter Zeitung's Paris correspondent, had declared himself convinced of Dreyfus's innocence very early on, in 1896, finding him to have been a victim of shadowy intrigues and of anti-Semitic and nationalist delusions. On 14 November 1897 the Frankfurter Zeitung printed a facsimile of the bordereau alongside a sample of Walsin-Esterhazy's handwriting, making their identity plain for all to see. In its commentary, the paper expressed its disappointment at what had become of the France of the rights of man.

A similar line was taken by the Berliner Tageblatt, which repeatedly warned of an alliance of cross and sword, of "sabre and aspergillum".⁹ Theodor Wolff (1868–1943), who would later become the paper's editor, was its Paris correspondent at the time. In his dispatches, he stressed that the Affair's true significance lay in "the assertion of the individual against the mass, the example of civic and moral courage against the powers that be in an instance of their wrongdoing".¹⁰ Southern Germany's leading liberal organ, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, struck a more nationalist note, describing the Affair as a matter largely of French domestic politics while emphasizing the anti-German attacks of French nationalists.

The Vienna Neue Freie Presse took a different approach from its German counterparts by downplaying Dreyfus's Jewish identity. In the dispatches sent by Berthold Frischauer (1851–1924), who had replaced Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) as the paper's Paris correspondent in 1895, the role of anti-Semitism faded into the background. This was a tactical choice to avoid further fanning the flames of anti-Semitism, which was already strong in Vienna. The Neue Freie Presse, the mouthpiece of Vienna's liberal (haute) bourgeoise, treated the Affair above all as a struggle for human rights and accordingly foregrounded Zola's involvement on behalf of Dreyfus. Zola was hailed as the hero of justice and as a public-spirited, engaged "intellectual". On 17 July 1898, immediately before the verdict against Zola was confirmed by the Versailles assizes, the Neue Freie Presse wrote: "There can be no doubt that the trial of Zola is a revolutionary one. But what a revolution this is, to turn against neither the legislative nor the executive but against the judicial power. … He is a 'bon bourgeois', albeit a 'bon bourgeois' run wild."¹¹

Unsurprisingly, such coverage in the liberal press and the pathos it contained provoked rejection in some quarters. Such an attitude is hinted at, for instance, in Arthur Schnitzler's (1862–1931) reaction to Dreyfus's (second) conviction by the Rennes court martial: "I'm quite angry at Mercier and that rabble – in spite of the Neue Freie Presse", the Viennese author wrote to his friend Gustav Schwarzkopf (1853–1939) on 9 September 1899.¹² The idiosyncratic and controversial attitude towards Dreyfus and Zola adopted by Karl Kraus (1874–1936) has likewise been explained by his aversion to the manner in which journalists exploited the affair.¹³ Kraus accused the liberal papers of forgetting the "judicial murders" in their own country over their concern with Dreyfus.¹⁴ Particularly striking were the articles published in Kraus's own magazine, Die Fackel, by the German socialist leader Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) in September and October 1899. In these articles, Liebknecht refused to believe in Dreyfus's innocence, asserting that this was an altogether normal spy scandal and that anti-Semitism had played no part in the verdict against Dreyfus. The Dreyfusards were suffering, according to Liebknecht, from "hysterical madness".¹⁵ His principal concern was with the stabilisation of Franco-German relations and of the republic itself, the fall of which might jeopardise peace between the two nations. The Dreyfusards, Liebknecht argued, were inadvertently strengthening both anti-Semitism and militarism. A similar attitude was adopted, paradoxically enough, by the monarchist writer Maximilian Harden (1861–1927) in his magazine Die Zukunft. Harden too felt peace to be under threat, in the issue of 5 February 1898 referring to Germany as the country "which at every hour faces the danger of renewed conflict with its western neighbour". His criticism of the Dreyfusards did not, however, lack Francophobic and anti-Semitic overtones.¹⁶

Finally, the social-democratic press (Vorwärts and Neue Zeit in Germany, Arbeiter Zeitung in Austria)¹⁷ was dominated by debates over the extent to which the Dreyfus case was an affair of exclusive concern to the bourgeoisie (Dreyfus's father having been a wealthy industrialist) or whether it was of concern to the workers at large. The publication of "J'accuse" and the trial of Zola certainly increased interest among Social Democrats in the wider social and political aspects of the affair, above all its bearing on the struggle against militarism and clericalism – ideas which "stood not only for notions of revenge, for the national aspirations of the bourgeoisie, but which severed as instruments of domination over the great mass of the working people"¹⁸. Following the publication of Zola's open letter, the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung accorded the defence of republican principles priority over the fate of Dreyfus himself.

Of course, a survey like this one can only ever paint a broad picture, being intended primarily to illustrate the intellectual and ideological context in which the German-speaking public perceived the events surrounding Dreyfus and Zola. It also highlights certain fears and obsessions that recur in Zola's articles and letters of the period as well as, it would seem, his self-conscious deployment of pathos.

Zola was concerned not least with his country's reputation abroad, with France's "greatness". Outrage at such injustices being committed in the land of the Declaration of the Rights of Man was indeed a recurring theme, particularly in the liberal press. The publication of Zola's "J'accuse" and the petitions that appeared in subsequent days, signed by writers and academics, are widely considered to mark the birth of the modern "engaged intellectual".

The reactions in the press also served to vindicate Zola's fear of war.¹⁹ The novelist had repeatedly expressed his fear that the German government – which must, after all, know the truth – might use the Affair as a moral weapon against France in case of war. Warlike sentiments were certainly expressed in the nationalist press of both countries, which had fought a major conflict only 25 years earlier. In France, which was still smarting from the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, war hysteria was stoked by Henri Rochefort's Intransigeant, which claimed that Emperor Wilhelm II had been in personal contact with Dreyfus. For their part, German newspapers vigorously denied such allegations. They largely supported the German government's non-intervention strategy, which alone (they believed) was capable of preventing diplomatic incidents and ultimately war. Accordingly, on 24 February 1898 the Berliner Neueste Nachrichten came to the dramatic conclusion that France, by "her delusion, her perversion of justice, her lack of discipline and morals" was endangering Germany, peace and global culture.

In his letters and articles, Zola made repeated appeals to international public opinion. And the public in Germany and in Austria had certainly taken a keen interest in the Dreyfus Affair and in Zola's interventions, not least through the wide coverage they received in the press. This was evident from the many letters both Dreyfus and Zola received from all over the world. In her survey of the letters received by the Dreyfus family, now held by the Musée de Bretagne in Rennes, Beate Gödde-Baumanns found German responses typically to be characterised by moving personal empathy and less political than those received from e.g. Great Britain, Belgium or Italy, which more often expressed disappointment at the betrayal of republican hopes.²⁰

The Affair's high media profile and the German public's interest in particular arose in part from a theatrical event which, in retrospect, might well be classified as a curiosity. As early as February 1898 the protagonists of the Dreyfus Affair became stage characters in a popular theatre in Hamburg's port district. The "Theater der Central-Halle" in St. Pauli, managed by Ernst Drucker, produced two lavishly staged melodramas entitled Capitain Dreyfus and Zola, which were announced as "great, sensational tableaux of the age". Their author was Georg Okonkowski (1865–1926), who at the time was known chiefly for his opera librettos. The aim was purely to entertain; historical accuracy was at best a secondary consideration and the names of many characters (though not of Dreyfus himself) were altered, with Esterhazy becoming "Sillassy" and General de Boisdeffre "General Lefèvre". The popular success of these plays was remarkable; the number of performances – Capitain Dreyfus reached 150 performances in January 1899 – suggests a total audience in the six figures. Two more plays on the same subject soon followed: Die Märtyrer von Frankreich oder der Sieg der Gerechtigkeit ("The martyrs of France or the triumph of justice", 1 December 1898) and Madame Dreyfus, oder Die Rückkehr von der Teufelsinsel ("Madame Dreyfus or the return from Devil's Island", 25 July 1899, following its premiere on 21 June 1899 in Königsberg).²¹

The Dreyfus Affair, Zola's intervention and the media response itself can thus be seen to have made a considerable stir internationally as the 19th century turned into the 20th. They became catalysts for a variety of ideological positions and interest, not only in Germany and Austria, as seen above, but also in other European countries. It is difficult to summarise the numerous publications on the Affair's reception in brief. What they show, in essence, is the extent to which the selection, representation and evaluation of events depended (first) on the political situation in the respective country and its relations with France, its history and culture, and (second) on the ideological orientation of the newspaper in question. Allowing for local variation, the polarities can be broadly expressed in the following terms: republic versus monarchy, a laicist separation of church and state versus close ties between state and (Catholic) church, cosmopolitanism versus anti-Semitism. Boundaries, however, could be fluid, with conservatives, for instance, sometimes siding with the Dreyfusard cause. This is vividly illustrated in James F. Brennan's large-scale study, which concentrates on the years 1897–1899, the most dramatic and eventful of the affair.²² Brennan analysed press relations in France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Italy. Each chapter deals with one country and forms a cohesive study in its own right, beginning with an introduction to the country's history (including press history) and politics, enabling reactions to be understood in context.

An interesting example of how coverage of the Affair was guided by ideological and national concerns is offered by Richard Barret's study of Ireland.²³ Barret shows how the anti-Dreyfusard stance of Ireland's Catholic-nationalist press (Freeman, Daily Independent and Daily Nation) in particular was determined not so much by anti-Semitic attitudes (though they certainly existed) as by a reaction to the pro-Dreyfus coverage in much of the English press. These Irish papers accused their English counterparts of hypocrisy for defending Dreyfus while rejecting the claims of Irish political prisoners. A more surprising expression of the peculiarly Irish situation can be found in the support for Dreyfus in other sections of the Catholic press, which Barret interprets above all as a reaction against the secular character of the French state.

Impact and repercussions

The Dreyfus Affair, Zola's intervention and their reception in the media turned out to be catalysts for ideological positions and interests. In France, the Affair led to the (re-)establishment of the Ligue des Patriotes, the Ligue de la patrie française and the Action française on the nationalist right and the foundation of the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme on the republican-democratic side. Public opinion too was long divided and the Dreyfus Affair was a bone of contention even within families and among friends, as reflected in the famous cartoon by Caran d'Ache in Le Figaro of 14 February 1898 ("Ils en ont parlé").

Heinrich Mann's (1871–1950) admiration for Zola was decisively influenced by the latter's involvement in the Dreyfus Affair. It was expressed in an essay – titled simply "Zola" – published in René Schickele's Weisse Blätter in 1915. The section on the Affair in particular quotes liberally from the Frenchman's work, and the overall impression is that Heinrich Mann had found in Zola's work the key to his own situation in wartime Germany and the means by which to express his loathing of the Kaiser and of the German intellectuals. His brother Thomas Mann (1875–1955) notoriously took umbrage at this, garnishing his Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man with recurring invectives against "civilization's literary man" – a transparent caricature of his unnamed elder brother.

The Affair took on a new relevance in the later years of the Weimar Republic, the stakes once more being nothing less than the defence of the republican form of government. Wilhelm Herzog has described the Dreyfus Affair as a "struggle for the republic",²⁴ as the "heroic phase of the Third Republic", which had emerged from this, probably its "most dangerous childhood disease", "cleansed, strengthened and internally more cohesive".²⁵ Soon after the Second World War Axel Eggebrecht (1899–1991), writing in the West German weekly Die Zeit, likewise stressed the cleansing power of the Dreyfus Affair, which Germany in the 1930s had sorely lacked.²⁶ Under the impression of the Holocaust, however, this angle became less important as criticism of supposedly "corrupt" French society and the anti-Semitic aspects of the affair were foregrounded. While Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, casually dismissed the whole Affair as a farce and accused Zola of politically vacuous pathos, Siegfried Thalheimer (1899–1981) depicted it as a conspiracy against the Jews staged by the army general staff, expressing his own contempt for the republic by portraying it as the "real culprit".²⁷

The ideological dimension of the affair was still palpable in the 1960s and 70s. The centenaries of the Affair's key dates in 1994, 1998 and 2008 (the latter marking the transfer of Zola's mortal remains to the Pantheon) provided the occasion for conferences and a profusion of (more or less) scholarly publications, even for crime novels about Zola's death. If the focus then was on Dreyfus's fate, the engagement of Zola and other Dreyfusards, and their relevance to liberal democracy, a more recent study²⁸ has examined the glamorous and sexually liberated circles of late-nineteenth-century Paris in which military attachés moved. In the obsessive surveillance of these attachés by the French intelligence services, the study's authors find another element to explain the affair.²⁹

Karl Zieger

Appendix

Sources

[Anon.]: Deutsches Volksblatt (17 February 1898). URL: http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=dvb&datum=18980217&seite=1&zoom=33 [2025-01-30]

[Anon.]: Die neue Boulange, in: Vorwärts 47,15 (25 February 1898). URL: https://collections.fes.de/historische-presse/periodical/zoom/24660 [2025-01-30]

[Anon.]: Wien, 16. Juli, in: Neue Freie Presse: Morgenblatt (17 July 1898), p. 1. URL: http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nfp&datum=18980717&seite=1&zoom=33 [2025-01-30]

Blum, Léon: Le Procès, in: La Revue blanche (15 March 1898).

Dreyfus, Alfred: Lettres d'un innocent, Paris 1898. URL: https://archive.org/details/lettresduninnoc00dreyuoft/mode/2up [2025-01-30]

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Paléologue, Maurice: Journal de l'affaire Dreyfus 1894–1899: L'affaire Dreyfus et le Quai d'Orsay, Paris 1955 (URL: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k24367f/f8.item [2025-01-30]); German ed.: Tagebuch der Affäre Dreyfus, tr. Helmut Lindemann, Stuttgart 1957.

Scheurer-Kestner, Auguste: Mémoires d'un sénateur dreyfusard, ed. André Roumieux, Strasbourg 1988.

Schwartzkoppen, Max von: Die Wahrheit über Dreyfus, ed. Bernhard Schwertfeger, Munich 1930.

Zola, Emile: Correspondance, ed. Bard H. Bakker, Montréal 1978–95, vols. I–X.

Zola, Emile: L'affaire Dreyfus: lettres et entretiens inédits, ed. Alain Pagès, Montréal 1994.

Zola, Emile: L'affaire Dreyfus: "J'accuse …!" et autres textes, ed. Henri Mitterand, Paris 2010 (Le Livre de poche: Classiques 31773).

Zola, Emile: La vérité en marche: textes sur l'affaire Dreyfus, ed. Vincent Duclert, Paris 2013.

Zola, Emile: Die Affäre Dreyfus: Der Siegeszug der Wahrheit, Stuttgart 1901.

Zola, Emile: Mein Kampf um Wahrheit und Recht: Meist unveröffentlichte Briefe aus dem Nachlaß, ed. Denise Le Blond-Zola, Dresden 1928. URL: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id494685859 [2025-01-30]

Zola, Emile: Der Fall Dreyfus und andere Kämpfe in Briefen und Bekenntnissen: Mit einer biographischen Einleitung von Denise Le Blond-Zola, ed. Artur Rosenberg, Dresden 1930.

Zola, Emile: "Letter to M. Félix Faure, President of the Republic ("J'accuse"), in: Emile Zola: The Dreyfus Affair. "J'accuse" and Other Writings, ed. Alain Pagès, tr. Eleanor Levieux. New Haven 1996.

Zola, Emile: Die Dreyfus-Affäre: Artikel, Interviews, Briefe, ed. Alain Pagès et al., Innsbruck 1998.

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Notes

1. ^{^} Zola's articles, letters and interviews on the Dreyfus affair can be found in a variety of editions and anthologies. The most recent in English is: Zola, The Dreyfus Affair 1996; in French: Zola, "J'accuse …!" et autres textes 2010 und Zola, La Vérité en marche 2013.
2. ^{^} Zola, Letter to M. Félix Faure 1998, p. 53. Original text: En portant ces accusations, je n'ignore pas que je me mets sous le coup des articles 30 et 31 de la loi sur la presse du 29 juillet 1881, qui punit les délits de diffamation. Et c'est volontairement que je m'expose. […] Je n'ai qu'une passion, celle de la lumière, au nom de l'humanité qui tant a souffert et qui a droit au bonheur. […] Qu'on ose donc me traduire en Cour d'assises et que l'enquête ait lieu au grand jour ! J'attends. (L'Aurore, 13 January 1898).
3. ^{^} A contemporary observer, the writer Henri Barbusse (1873–1935), described the impact of Zola's letter as follows: " More still than the bravery of the man who embarks fully on this judicial adventure and courts the risk of getting lost in it for good along with his bundle of books and honours, one must admire the perfect clarity of view in the account of events he wrote. … While many of his contemporaries … still wavered and waited for evidence of some kind or another, he, with unfailing certainty, assembled his conviction". Barbusse, Zola 1932, pp. 245f.
4. ^{^} Blum, Le Procès 1898.
5. ^{^} On the coverage of the Dreyfus Affair and Zola's involvement in the German-speaking press see e.g. Cahm, L'Affaire Dreyfus dans la presse quotidienne allemande 1995, pp. 215–228; Magnou, Die Dreyfus-Affäre im Spiegel der Wiener Presse 1983. This section largely follows the account in my own "Vorwort: Zola und die Dreyfus-Affäre in den deutschsprachigen Zeitungen", in Zola, Die Dreyfus-Affäre: Artikel, Interviews, Briefe 1998, pp. 7–25.
6. ^{^} Fuchs / Fuchs, Die Affäre Dreyfus im Spiegel der Berliner Presse 1995, pp. 51–80.
7. ^{^} On the development of anti-Semitism in the Neue Preußischen Zeitung see Cahm, L'Affaire Dreyfus dans la presse quotidienne allemande 1995, p. 219.
8. ^{^} [Anon.], Deutsches Wochenblatt 17.02.1898; digital version: ANNO, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.
9. ^{^} Fuchs / Fuchs, Die Affäre Dreyfus im Spiegel der Berliner Presse 1995, p. 57.
10. ^{^} Quoted in Schwarz, Theodor Wolff 1968, p. 20.
11. ^{^} [Anon.], Neue Freie Presse Nr. 12176, Vienna 1898, p. 1.
12. ^{^} On this and on the Dreyfus Affair in the Austrian press see Scheichl, Österreichische Reaktionen 1986, pp. 241–257.
13. ^{^} On Karl Kraus: Arntzen, Karl Kraus und die Presse 1975, pp. 18–24.
14. ^{^} Arntzen, Karl Kraus und die Presse 1975, pp. 18–24.
15. ^{^} Arntzen, Karl Kraus und die Presse 1975, pp. 18–24.
16. ^{^} Gödde-Baumanns, Die helle Seite bleibt verborgen 1995, p. 105. On Kraus and Harden: Le Rider, Die Dreyfus-Affäre in den Augen der assimilierten Juden Wiens und Berlins 1995, pp. 139–155.
17. ^{^} See Scheichl, Österreichische Reaktionen 1986, pp. 250ff. and Winling, Echos de l'Affaire 1983, pp. 65–73.
18. ^{^} [Anon.]: Die neue Boulange 1898, p. 1; digital version: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
19. ^{^} See Ory / Sirinelli, Les intellectuels 1986.
20. ^{^} See Gödde-Baumanns, Die helle Seite bleibt verborgen 1995, p. 102.
21. ^{^} See Giesing, Captain Dreyfus auf St. Pauli 2005, pp. 175–182.
22. ^{^} Brennan, The Reflection of the Dreyfus Affair 1998.
23. ^{^} On this and the following section see Barret, The Dreyfus Affair 2007, pp. 77–89.
24. ^{^} Herzog, Der Kampf einer Republik 1933.
25. ^{^} Gödde-Baumanns, Die helle Seite bleibt verborgen 1995, p. 106.
26. ^{^} Eggebrecht, Die Affäre 1946.
27. ^{^} Gödde-Baumanns, Die helle Seite bleibt verborgen 1995, pp. 110f.
28. ^{^} Gervais, Le Dossier secret 2012.
29. ^{^} This is likely to have been due not only to widespread anti-Semitism in the general staff but also to its homophobia: the German and Italian military attachés, Schwarzkoppen and Panizzardi, probably had a homosexual relationship.