Captain Dreyfus

The Story of a Mass Hysteria

Nicholas Halasz

За особеностите на екземпляра

Състояние:: Много добро
Език:: Английски
Наличност:: 1 бр.

За изданието

Издателство:: Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster
Град на издаване:: New York
Година:: 1955 г.
Антикварна:: Да
Език:: Английски
Страници:: 274
Корици:: Меки
Категория:: Приключения

"Captain Dreyfus: The Story of a Mass Hysteria," was the basis for the 1958 movie "I Accuse!" with Jose Ferrer as Dreyfus. The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal which divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was sent to the penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana and placed in solitary confinement. Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit. However, high-ranking military officials suppressed this new evidence and Esterhazy was unanimously acquitted after the second day of his trial in military court. Instead of being exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus was further accused on the basis of false documents fabricated by French counter-intelligence officers seeking to re-confirm his conviction. Word of the military court's framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread, largely due to a vehement public protestation in a Paris newspaper by writer Emile Zola, in January 1898. The case had to be re-opened and Alfred Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards[1]) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards), such as Edouard Drumont (the director and publisher of the anti-semitic newspaper La Libre Parole) and Hubert-Joseph Henry. Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. Alfred Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army in 1906. He later served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.