Alfred Dreyfus was born at Mulhausen in Alsace to a prosperous Jewish cotton manufacturer. The family moved to Paris after the loss of the province to Germany in 1871 and Dreyfus was commissioned in the French artillery in 1880. In 1896 he became one of the best-known French officers in the world when he was falsely convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. Continued public outcry over a case rife with antisemitism and military bungling saw him win a presidential pardon in 1899. The army eventually overturned his conviction in 1906 and he returned to the artillery. He served in the First World War and died in 1935. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
William Harding, Dreyfus: The Prisoner of Devil's Island (New York: Western W. Wilson, 1899), 25-26.
Record Data
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Exact
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Foreign
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Personal
