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| Title |
Alfred Dreyfus |
| Number |
55225 |
| Size |
4.25" x 7" |
| Date |
October 1, 1908 |
| Place |
[Paris, France] |
| Category |
Judaica |
| Price |
$5,000.00 |
Dreyfus is suing the anti-Semitic newspaper “La Libre Parole” for refusing to correct statements it published following his exoneration, stating that his lawyers in his two trials for treason, “M. Demange, of course, M. Mornard agree with me…”
Historic Autograph Letter Signed “A Dreyfus” in French, two separate pages on conjoined sheets, 4.25” x 7”. Mounting traces at edge of blank verso of second page. 101 Boulevard Malesherbes [Paris, France], October 1, 1908. Unnamed recipient. Fine condition.
In full, “I wrote you yesterday to ask you when you would return. Meanwhile, I am sending herewith a draft request for a trial to do with la Libre Parole before the Civil Court. In fact, I have made up my mind to take the direction that I had thought of two years ago and on which we had decided on. – M. [Edgar] Demange, of course, M. [Henri] Mornard agree with me. Would you please be kind enough by asking of M. le President< i>[Henri]Ditte an expiation, the closest possible. Please note that it will be necessary to notify within at least three months, about the actes d’interruptifs de prescription. This precaution is absolutely necessary even though we are going before the Civil Court and not before the Court of Assizes.”
“La Libre Parole” was a virulently anti-Semitic newspaper founded in 1892. The day following Dreyfus’s conviction in 1894, the headline in “La Libre Parole” read “Out of France, Jews! France for the French!” On October 24, 1906, Dreyfus had brought suit against “La Libre Parole” for refusing to correct statements made in that paper which were at variance with the decision of the Court of Cessation on July 12, 1906, setting aside his conviction.
Edgar Demange was Dreyfus's lawyer in both trials. Henri Mornard was Dreyfus’s lawyer for the review of his 1899 conviction. Henri Ditte was President of the Tribunal of First Instance of the Seine, a Civil Court.
“Actes d’interruptifs de prescription” concern civil actions for compensation for violations in the press (in this case, “La Libre Parole”) such as libel or slander – this period starts again from each interrupting act, so that it is the plaintiff in the action to stop every three months prescribed by showing the defendant’s intention to continue the action.
In 1894, French counter-intelligence retrieved from the wastepaper basket of the German military attaché in Paris, a handwritten schedule listing secret French military documents that had been or were to be passed to Germany. The inference was that someone on the General Staff was a traitor. Suspicion fell on Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jew on the staff, although there was no real evidence against him. In December, Dreyfus was tried in secret, convicted of treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. In 1896, a note was found indicating that Major Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy was a spy, receiving money from the Germans. Re-examination of the Dreyfus file indicated that the handwritten schedule, the only evidence against Dreyfus, was in the hand of Esterhazy. Esterhazy was put on trial in 1898 but was acquitted. Esterhazy’s acquittal resulted in the writer Emile Zola’s famous open letter to the French President: “J’Accuse!”
On June 3, 1899, the Court of Appeals overturned the verdict of 1894. On September 9, 1899, despite the evidence of his innocence, the Military Court found Dreyfus guilty of treason once again. On September 19, 1899, French President Emile Loubert pardoned Dreyfus. On July 12, 1906, Dreyfus was officially exonerated by a military commission. On June 4, 1908, Zola, who had died in 1902, was reburied in the Panthéon in Paris. Dreyfus escorted Madame Zola to the ceremony. Outside the Panthéon, Dreyfus was wounded in the arm by two shots fired in an assassination attempt by Louis Gregori, a right-wing journalist and anti-Dreyfusard. Although Gregori was immediately seized and arrested, he was later acquitted by a jury at the Paris Court of Assizes, demonstrating that the wounds opened in French society by the Dreyfus case had not yet healed.
Major Alfred Dreyfus wrote this letter just four months later.
We have been unable to find any record of a Dreyfus letter about the “Dreyfus affair” ever being sold at any major public auction in the last 40 years.
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