Auguste Scheurer-Kestner
Auguste Scheurer-Kestner (born February 13, 1833 in Mulhouse , † September 19, 1899 in Bagnères-de-Luchon ) was a French chemist, industrialist and politician. He played a significant role in the rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus , who was falsely accused of treason in the so-called Dreyfus affair .
Life
Auguste Scheurer studied in Strasbourg under Georges-Louis Leblois . He continued his scientific training in Paris. In 1862 he was sentenced to four months' imprisonment for "Republican propaganda". In 1867 he was involved in the 1st International Peace Congress , which was chaired by Victor Hugo in Geneva. When the Franco-German War broke out , he initially took over the management of his industrial company from his father-in-law.
In 1871 he became a member of the Haut-Rhin department . When Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by the German Empire, he was elected a member of the Seine department . In 1875 he was elected senator for life. Due to his friendship with the influential French statesman Léon Gambetta , he became editor of La République française , together with Georges Clemenceau he founded the parliamentary group Union Républicaine . In 1895 he became Vice President of the French Senate. In 1898, during the height of the Dreyfus affair, he was unsuccessful in his re-election. He died in 1899 on the day Alfred Dreyfus was pardoned.
Role in the Dreyfus affair
On 22 December 1894, the Jewish was artillery - Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who in general staff of the French army served by a military court to life imprisonment and exile condemned. The conviction was based on dubious manuscript reviews and unlawful evidence. Initially, only family members and a few people who had doubts about the guilt of the defendant in the course of the trial campaigned for the reopening of the trial and Dreyfus' acquittal .
Scheurer-Kestner initially had no doubt that the court martial had ruled lawfully, even if he felt that the exclusion of the public from the proceedings was a violation of fundamental legal principles. What he found strange was the lack of a credible motive for Dreyfus' alleged treason . However, impressed by a conversation with Alfred Dreyfus' brother Mathieu at the beginning of 1895, he became interested in the case. His conversations with various high-ranking politicians increased his doubts. Among other things, the former French Justice Minister Ludovic Trarieux drew his attention to possible inconsistencies in the conduct of the case, the Italian Ambassador Luigi Tornielli said that in his opinion evidence had been falsified to ensure a conviction of Dreyfus.
At the same time, the new head of the French intelligence service , Lieutenant Colonel Marie-Georges Picquart , was able to identify the real traitor Ferdinand Walsin-Esterházy on the basis of the so-called Le petit bleu . Picquart had opposed the demands of his superiors to let the misjudgment against Dreyfus stand , who had been arrested and brought to justice at the instigation of the then Minister of War Auguste Mercier and with the consent of the most senior French officer, General Félix Gustave Saussier . Picquart was removed from his position as head of the intelligence service, first transferred to the province and then to North Africa. While on vacation, Picquart confided in his close friend, lawyer Louis Leblois. At the latter's urging, Picquart also authorized him to inform a government official about Picquart's knowledge of the Dreyfus case. Picquart, however, did not want to become the prosecutor of the army and forbade Leblois to make direct contact with the Dreyfus family or their lawyer or to mention the name Esterhazy.
After Leblois informed him of Piquart's well-founded suspicion against Esterhazy, Scheurer-Kestner informed Alfred's wife Lucie Dreyfus in July 1897 that he would campaign for a reopening of the case. His first statement to the Senate Presidium that he thought Dreyfus was innocent attracted a lot of public attention. The support of Dreyfus by Scheurer-Kestner, who is known for his integrity, widened the circle of those who likewise expressed doubts or at least demanded that the matter be fully clarified. Scheurer-Kestner's behavior in the Dreyfus case was characterized by cautious tactics until November 1897, in which he tried to use his relationships with other politicians. In view of the increasing anti-Semitism, Scheurer-Kestner feared a relapse into the religious wars of the early modern era and tried to detach Alfred Dreyfus' religious affiliation from the case.
Leblois had asked Scheurer-Kestner not to go public, in order to protect Picquart, until there was further evidence unrelated to Picquart. This happened in early November 1897. First, the historian Gabriel Monod wrote in an open letter published on November 4th that, as a recognized graphologist, he could confirm that the Bordereau was not written by Dreyfus. On November 7, a stockbroker who happened to have acquired one of the Bordereau's facsimiles identified the Bordereau's handwriting as that of his client Esterhazy. As proof of this he gave Mathieu Dreyfus letters from his client. On November 15, Scheurer-Kestner went public with an open letter published in Le Temps and referred to the new facts that, in his opinion, would prove Dreyfus' innocence. Almost at the same time as Scheurer-Kestner's public statement, Mathieu accused Dreyfus in an open letter to War Minister Billot Esterhazy as the author of the Bordereau. Less than a year after War Minister Billot had assured MPs that Dreyfus would be lawfully convicted, Prime Minister Félix Jules Méline now felt compelled to confirm to the Chamber of Deputies that there was no Dreyfus affair. Scheurer-Kestner responded to this declaration on December 7th in a speech to the Senate. In his very factual statements, he named the facts known to him and described the course of the process as flawed because secret documents had been transmitted to the court. Former Justice Minister Trarieux was the only senator who supported Scheurer-Kestner's arguments. He pointed out that it should not be regarded as an attack on the army if a request for rectification was submitted after serious errors were made. Félix Jules Méline, on the other hand, also stressed before the Senate that there was no Dreyfus affair.
Scheurer-Kestner was exposed to violent attacks from the press after his public confession that he assumed Dreyfu's innocence. At first L'Intransigient described him as a "coward", "liar" and "idiot", two days later La Libre surpassed this by calling him an "old villain" whose action can only be explained by "old age". His appearance ensured that, from the summer of 1897, the case of the alleged treasonous Jewish officer, which had actually almost been forgotten, was dealt with. Intrigues by members of the General Staff who were involved in the affair resulted in an acquittal of Esterhazy. Émile Zola, who, at the suggestion of Scheurer-Kestner, had also dealt with the Dreyfus case in several eloquent articles, denounced this misjudgment with his article J'accuse , which was published on January 13, 1898. Zola was charged with defamation over this article and went into exile in the summer of 1898. In the end, however, it also led to the Dreyfus family's request for revision being granted. There was a second court martial in Rennes, in which the military judges Dreyfus again found guilty. On September 19, 1899, the French government pardoned Dreyfus, not least because they wanted to end the dispute over this case. The pardon was signed on the same day that Scheurer-Kestner died. Dreyfus was fully rehabilitated in 1906. In the same year the French Senate decided to honor Scheurer-Kestner for his life's work with an honorary bust in the gallery of the Senate.
literature
- Maurice Barrès : Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme . Éditions du Trident, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-87690-040-8 .
- Louis Begley : The Dreyfus Case: Devil's Island, Guantánamo, History's Nightmare. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-42062-1 .
- Léon Blum : Summoning the Shadows. The Dreyfus Affair. From the French with an introduction and a note by Joachim Kalka. Berenberg, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-937834-07-9 .
- Jean-Denis Bredin: The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. George Braziller, New York 1986, ISBN 0-8076-1109-3 .
- James Brennan: The reflection of the Dreyfus affair in the European Press, 1897-1899 . Peter Lang, New York 1998, ISBN 0-8204-3844-8 .
- Leslie Derfler: The Dreyfus Affair . Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 2002, ISBN 0-313-31791-7 .
- Vincent Duclert: The Dreyfus Affair . Military mania, hostility to the republic, hatred of Jews. Wagenbach, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-8031-2239-2 .
- Eckhardt Fuchs, Günther Fuchs: “J'accuse!” On the Dreyfus affair. Decaton-Verlag, Mainz 1994, ISBN 3-929455-27-7 .
- Ruth Harris: The Man on Devil's Island - Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that divided France. Penguin Books, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-101477-7 .
- Martin P. Johnson: The Dreyfus Affair - Honor and Politics in the Belle Époque . Macmillan Press Ltd, Houndmills 1999, ISBN 0-333-68267-X .
- Elke-Vera Kotowski , Julius H. Schoeps (Eds.): J'accuse…! …I accuse! About the Dreyfus affair. A documentation. Catalog accompanying the traveling exhibition in Germany May to November 2005. Published on behalf of the Moses Mendelssohn Center . Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 2005, ISBN 3-935035-76-4 .
- George Whyte : The Dreyfus Affair. The power of prejudice. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-60218-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Begley, p. 135
- ↑ Fuchs et al., P. 53
- ^ Harris, p. 87
- ↑ Begley, p. 125
- ↑ Fuchs et al., P. 54
- ↑ Fuchs et al., P. 55
- ^ Harris, pp. 90 and 97
- ^ Harris, p. 87
- ↑ Kotowski et al., P. 40
- ^ Harris, p. 100
- ^ Harris, p. 101
- ↑ Whyte, p. 168
- ↑ Brennan, p. 32
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Scheurer-Kestner, Auguste |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French chemist, industrialist and politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 13, 1833 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mulhouse |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 19, 1899 |
| Place of death | Bagneres-de-Luchon |