Alfred Dreyfus

Born in Mulhouse, Alsace, in 1859, Alfred Dreyfus was a French army officer who trained as an artilleryman and rose to the rank of captain. He is remembered above all for the Dreyfus Affair, the scandal that began in 1894 when he was falsely accused of passing military secrets to Germany.

Dreyfus was publicly degraded, sent to Devil’s Island, and made the center of a bitter national crisis. As evidence of his innocence slowly emerged, the case exposed deep divisions in French society, especially around antisemitism, the military, and the justice system. After years of struggle, he was eventually exonerated and reinstated in the army.

His story has endured far beyond his own lifetime because it speaks so clearly to the dangers of prejudice and the importance of due process. Even for readers who know the broad outlines of the affair, Dreyfus remains a strikingly human figure: disciplined, resilient, and caught in one of the most famous miscarriages of justice in modern history.