ABSTRACT
Alfred Dreyfuss was a French Jewish artillery officer, who was charged and convicted of treason in 1894. The evidence to support his guilt was tenuous and his family fought to prove his innocence, highlighting that another officer might have been guilty. The case became a major scandal, with the public divided between those who thought he was innocent and those who believed he was guilty. The case, which became known as Dreyfuss Affair, brought forth significant anti-Jewish sentiment, and highlighted the ongoing place of anti-Semitism in French society, something that was confronting to a culture that was formally secular and recognised the equality of all its citizens. Ultimately in 1906, Dreyfuss was pardoned and later exonerated and allowed to return to his military career. The moving account, coupled with letters to his wife that present their marriage as the ideal nineteenth-century domestic union, was designed to present him as a man of honour and respectability, promoting idea of his innocence.
