Jean Sandherr

Jean Sandherr

Nicolas Jean Robert Conrad Auguste Sandherr (born June 6, 1846 in Mulhouse ; died May 24, 1897 in Paris ) was a French colonel involved in the Dreyfus affair .

Early life and career

Sandherr was born in Mulhouse in Alsace, as was Alfred Dreyfus . He was the son of a notary at the commercial court in Mulhouse. He left the military academy of Saint-Cyr in 1866 as a sous-lieutenant ( sub-lieutenant ) of the chasseurs à pied ( hunters ). In 1870 he was promoted to lieutenant and in 1873 to captain . He was accepted into the first class of the École supérieure de Guerre and left this military school with the rank of major.

Wounded at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War , Sandherr was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in September 1870 . He served as captain of the 2nd regiment of Algerian tirailleurs (riflemen) when Tunisia was annexed as a French protectorate in April 1881 . His job was to assess the hostility of the Tunisian tribes towards the French occupation.

The Dreyfus Affair

In 1885 he was appointed battalion commander and deputy head of the statistical department of the Army General Staff . Military counterintelligence was hiding behind this harmless-sounding name . In 1887 Sandherr took over the management of the service from Colonel Paul Adolphe Grisot (1839–1912). In 1891 he was made lieutenant colonel and placed under the direct command of General Charles Arthur Gonse when the Dreyfus affair began. Sandherr was assisted in his duties by Major Hubert Henry , who had Gonse's full confidence.

The glued bordereau

On September 25, 1894, the cleaning lady at the German embassy in Paris, Marie Bastian, who spied for the statistical department, procured a torn and unsigned letter from the wastebasket of the German military attaché Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen . From this letter, the so-called Bordereau ("Aufstellung", "Coverblatt", "Accompanying letter") , it emerged that French military secrets had been handed over to the Germans. Sandherr had the matter investigated by a secret commission, which quickly settled on Captain Alfred Dreyfus as the perpetrator and guilty party, whereupon Dreyfus was soon arrested, tried and convicted.

Promoted to colonel on April 14, 1895, Sandherr left the statistical department on July 1 of that year to take command of the 20th Infantry Regiment in Montauban . His successor in the department was Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart , who was committed to the rehabilitation of Captain Dreyfus. The scandal escalated in 1898 when it became apparent that the indictment had been tampered with and incriminating documents forged by Major Henry.

Sickness and death

Jean Sandherr did not live to see the end of the Dreyfus affair, although he was one of its initiators. A caused by syphilis general paralysis forced him to leave active duty in December 1896 and he succumbed to the disease a few months later. Posthumously he was made an officer of the Legion of Honor.

Web links

Commons : Jean Sandherr  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Jean-Marie Schmitt, Nicolas Jean Robert Conrad Auguste Sandherr , in: Nouveau dictionnaire de biographie alsacienne , Volume 32, p. 3367

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.ecole-superieure-de-guerre.fr/promotions/list/search/1/106?nom=sandherr&prenom=
2. ↑ Gérald Arboit, Note historique No 14. L'affaire avant l'Affaire: le discrédit du colonel Vincent, chef de la Section de statistique de l'état-major de l'armée , website of the Center Français de recherche sur le renseignement ( CF2R), dated June 7, 2008. ( Memento of the original dated November 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 14, 2016 
3. ↑ Certificate of Appointment of the Legion of Honor