Ferdinand Walsin-Esterházy
Marie Charles Ferdinand Walsin-Esterházy (born December 16, 1847 in Paris , † May 21, 1923 in Harpenden , England) was a French officer and spy for Germany. He was the trigger for the Dreyfus affair : He wrote the secret document to the German embassy in Paris, which was originally attributed to Alfred Dreyfus and for which he was convicted.
Life
Walsin-Esterhazy was the son of General and Division skommandanten in the Crimean War Louis Joseph Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (1807-1857) and removed with the Hungarian magnate family Esterházy related: His grandfather Jean Marie Auguste Walsin-Esterhazy (1767-1840), born in Valleraugue in the Gard department , was the illegitimate son of Countess Marie Anne Esterházy de Galántha (1742–1823) and of Marquis Jean André César de Ginestous (1725–1810). He had been adopted by the Esterházys' personal physician, the French doctor Walsin.
Ferdinand was a pupil of the Lycée Bonaparte (today Lycée Condorcet ), entered the Foreign Legion and in 1874 became Ordonnanzoffizier of General Grenier as Capitaine . In 1877 he was assigned to the Deuxième Bureau , the army's intelligence department. From 1894 he began to spy for the German side, probably for financial reasons.
After Mathieu Dreyfus, the brother of the wrongly convicted Alfred Dreyfus, wrote to the Minister of War in November 1897 and described Walsin-Esterházy as the author of the Bordereau with the espionage offer to the German ambassador, Walsin-Esterházy himself demanded a military trial against himself, in which despite serious allegations, he was acquitted on January 11, 1898 in a secret trial.
While Émile Zola then published his famous J'accuse and was now convicted of insulting the army, Ferdinand Walsin-Esterházy finally admitted in July 1899 in the newspaper Le Matin that he had written the said bordereau, but claimed that this was on instructions his superiors had happened.
Dishonorably discharged from the French army that same year, he fled to London and spent the rest of his life in exile in England. Impoverished for many years, he complained that Jews had destroyed his existence and that the army had betrayed him. The Forchtenstein line of the Esterházy family later paid him at least 50,000 francs so that he no longer called himself Esterházy , but Jean de Voilemont . A small inheritance finally secured him a livelihood until he found work as a journalist under various pseudonyms. Esterhazy died in 1923; Shortly before his death he claimed that he had written the bordereau on behalf of Jean Sandherr, the then head of the intelligence service.
Walsin-Esterházy was married to Anne-Marie de Nettancourt-Vaubécourt (1864-1944) since February 6, 1886. They had two daughters: Claire Marie Évérilda Walsin Esterhazy (1887-1965), actress, known under the name Hilda Robesca , and Marie-Alice Armande Valentine Walsin Esterhazy (1889-1976), piano teacher.
literature
- Henri Guillemin: L'énigme Esterhazy . Gallimard, Paris 1962
- Jean Doise: Un secret bien gardé. Histoire militaire de l'Affaire Dreyfus. Le Seuil, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-02-021100-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Louis Ferdinand WALSIN-ESTERHAZY at Geneanet , accessed November 29, 2016.
- ^ Website on the Esterházy family , accessed on September 23, 2011.
- ^ Martin P. Johnson: The Dreyfus Affair - Honor and Politics in the Belle Époque. Basingstoke 1999, p. 151.
- ↑ Everilda WALSIN-ESTERHAZY at Geneanet , accessed November 29, 2016.
- ↑ Valentine WALSIN-ESTERHAZY at Geneanet , accessed November 29, 2016.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Walsin-Esterházy, Ferdinand |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Walsin-Esterházy, Marie Charles Ferdinand (full name); Voilemont, Marie Charles Ferdinand |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French officer and spy |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 16, 1847 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 21, 1923 |
| Place of death | Harpenden , England |