Alfred Dreyfus

Born in Mulhouse in 1859, Alfred Dreyfus was a French army officer whose name became inseparable from the Dreyfus Affair. In 1894 he was falsely accused of passing military secrets to Germany, convicted, and publicly degraded before being sent to imprisonment on Devil’s Island.

The case did not fade away. Evidence of his innocence gradually emerged, and the fight to clear his name drew in journalists, politicians, and writers, most famously Émile Zola. After years of bitter public conflict, Dreyfus was finally exonerated and reinstated in the French army, and the affair became a lasting symbol of both official injustice and the dangers of antisemitism.

He later served during World War I and lived until 1935. Today he is remembered not only as a soldier, but as a man at the center of a historic battle over fairness, citizenship, and democratic ideals.