Dreyfus, Alfred, 1859-1935

The trials of Captain Alfred Dreyfus took place in the last decade of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th century. Dreyfus, an officer of the French general staff, was falsely accused of passing state secrets to the German military, tried and twice convicted (1895, 1899) of treason before finally being exonerated in 1906. The effects of the decade-long controversy were felt both within France and abroad for decades after the case proper was settled.

The media that surrounded the trial and its aftermath created a flurry of public commentary on the topic. Postcards in particular were a new and inexpensive format that propelled the scale of popular opinion expressed through their mass-circulation and often time provocative, antisemitic imagery.

Dreyfus counted among his defenders such illustrious figures as the future French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, the celebrated novelist Emile Zola, and the social thinker Bernard Lazare. Theodore Herzl, serving as Paris correspondent for the Viennese newspaper Die Welt, was disturbed enough by the antisemitic implications of the Dreyfus Affair to turn his thoughts and energies to political Zionism, the movement which he founded.