“To those wonderful people who threw themselves into the struggle to defend my father, at the risk of destroying their careers and sacrificing the well-being of their families.”
The Dreyfus Case, by Alfred Dreyfus in collaboration with his son, Pierre Dreyfus. Published by Yale University Press. English translation by Donald C. McKay of the Department of History at Harvard University. New Haven, Connecticut, United States, 1937. First English edition.
An exceptional and deeply personal account of the legal and political affair that shook the very foundations of the French Third Republic and whose repercussions continue to resonate to this day. The book is based on the literary and personal papers left by Alfred Dreyfus, who passed away in 1935. He left behind an unpublished manuscript beginning with the dramatic moments of his retrial in Rennes in 1899 and culminating in the emotional and historic moment of his official rehabilitation in 1906, held in the very same courtyard where he had suffered his greatest humiliation, when his military rank was stripped from him and his sword broken before a jeering crowd. The opening part of this dramatic narrative is presented by his son, Pierre Dreyfus, who reveals for the first time unprecedented details and invaluable family documents. Interspersed throughout the volume are moving letters, some published here for the first time, written by Captain Dreyfus to his wife Lucie during his years of imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. They are accompanied by extensive correspondence with prominent figures from France and across Europe, illustrating the extraordinary intensity of the public emotions stirred by the affair across national borders. Although Dreyfus ended his career as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the French Army and was awarded the Legion of Honour, the scars of Devil’s Island and the false accusation of treason – deliberately and carefully fabricated by the highest ranks of the military command, remained with him and his family for the rest of their lives.
The book reveals the cruel human dynamics that accompanied the affair: a chain of absurd bureaucratic failures that evolved into an organized state conspiracy to convict an innocent man, set against the heroic struggle of men of conscience and intellect such as the novelist Émile Zola (through his famous open letter “J’Accuse…!”) and the young statesman Léon Blum. The stark contrasts of human nature emerge throughout the work: great moral courage alongside ruthless opportunists, sadists, profiteers, fanatical clergymen, and the true traitor himself, Major Ferdinand Esterhazy.
The publication of this volume in 1937 carries profound symbolic and contemporary significance. At a time when Europe was sinking beneath the shadow of Fascism and Nazism and the liberal principles of tolerance and justice were once again under existential threat, the book served as a powerful reminder of the importance of combating prejudice.
Dreyfus’s son dedicated the book “To those wonderful people who threw themselves into the struggle to defend my father, at the risk of destroying their careers and sacrificing the well-being of their families” (from the printed dedication at the beginning of the book).
xxiv, 303 pages. Hardcover with the original dust jacket. Tears and losses to the dust jacket. The book itself is in good condition.
