This photograph portrays Alfred Dreyfus and Commandant Targe at the rehabilitation ceremony that took place on July 21, 1906.
“It was the end of my torment which had lasted for twelve years, the end of my anguish over the future of my children.”
With these words Dreyfus recalled the afternoon of July 21, 1906, when his family gathered in the small courtyard of the École Militaire for his rehabilitation ceremony.
Reinstated in the army and promoted to major, he received the cross of the Legion of Honour, the highest decoration for service to the nation.
Following his wrongful conviction of treason, Alfred Dreyfus served a prison sentence on Devil’s Island from 1895 to 1899. Due to the protest led by famous figures, including Émile Zola, Dreyfus was brought back to France for a second trial. In this trial he was, once again, found guilty but was granted a pardon by the French President in 1899 and released from prison. Dreyfus remained, officially, a traitor until July 12, 1906, when he was exonerated by a military commission and promoted to the rank of major.
Despite the suffering they endured at the hands of the French army, Alfred, Lucie, and their two children continued to show staunch loyalty to France: "When I am finally leading my brave soldiers again, I will forget everything, the suffering, the torture, the outrageous insults!" said Alfred, on August 2, 1914, anxious to enlist as artillery officer in World War I. Lucie, a trained nurse, and her daughter, Jeanne, volunteered in the Saint-Louis hospital, and Pierre served in the war as an artillery officer, receiving the Croix de Guerre for his service.
After the war, Dreyfus gradually retired from public life, revisiting the affair by cataloguing his diaries, scrapbooks, and letters. On July 12, 1935, he died at his home in Paris, exactly 29 years after his exoneration. He was buried in a small religious service at the Montparnasse cemetery.
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The Dreyfus Affair – Alfred Dreyfus was born in 1859 to a Jewish family in Alsace in the east of France. Dreyfus joined the French Army and was promoted to the rank of captain in the artillery corps in 1889. In 1894, the French Army’s counter intelligence section became aware of classified information being passed on to the German Army. Suspicion quickly fell on Dreyfus, and he was arrested in October 1894 and convicted of treason in a secret court martial. Dreyfus was stripped of his rank and military decorations before a large crowd of cheering onlookers in a “degradation ceremony” and was deported to Devil’s Island, a penal colony off the coast of South America. Throughout his trial Dreyfus claimed his innocence, and in the degradation ceremony he cried out: “I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the army. Long live France! Long live the army!” The many activists and intellectuals who supported Dreyfus were known as Dreyfusards. The famous French writer Émile Zola published an open letter titled “J’accuse” in a Paris newspaper, accusing the president and government of France of anti-Semitism and of the wrongful imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus. The anti-Dreyfusards, on the other hand, saw the affair as an example of the unpatriotic views held by the Jews. They saw Dreyfus’ roots in Alsace (a territory still being disputed by France and Germany) as proof of his affiliation to Germany. The protests finally succeeded, and in 1896 Alfred Dreyfus was returned to France and given a second trial. Despite the evidence brought before the court, Dreyfus was again found guilty of treason. Public opinion, however, forced President Émile Loubet to grant a pardon, and in 1899 Dreyfus was released from prison. He, nonetheless, officially remained a traitor until his full acquittal in 1906.
