Le faux Henry
As Le faux Henry (Eng .: "the fake Henry", also called the "Henry fake") is a forged letter from the French major Hubert Henry in the context of the Dreyfus affair that the legality of the conviction of the artillery captain is called Alfred Dreyfus was supposed to prove treason. It was forged by Major Henry either on October 30th or November 1st, 1896, when the use of illegal evidence in the trial against Captain Dreyfus was already being discussed in the French press and individuals on the General Staff knew that the most important piece of evidence, the so-called Bordereau , was written not by Alfred Dreyfus, but by the French major Ferdinand Walsin-Esterházy .
In addition to the Le petit bleu and the Esperanza letter , Le faux Henry was one of the essential documents that later helped to clear up the Dreyfus affair.
background
In September 1894, the cleaning lady Marie Bastian, who was paid for by the French intelligence service, stole an unsigned letter from the German military attaché Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen's trash , the so-called Bordereau, which was apparently a letter accompanying a shipment of five secret military documents that the military attaché had received. The documents sold did not represent any significant military secrets, but they did indicate that the German intelligence service had an informant in the French General Staff. Captain Alfred Dreyfus was quickly suspected. The suspicion was based solely on an apparent resemblance between Dreyfus' handwriting and that of the Bordereau. Dreyfus was sentenced by a court martial within a few weeks; the trial of the captain of the Jewish faith was accompanied by anti-Semitic hate speech in parts of the French press. The press reactions made it clear that in the event of an acquittal, the public would accuse the French Minister of War, Auguste Mercier , of giving in to a “Jewish syndicate”.
Since the evidence was very thin and Dreyfus had no motive for such espionage, a secret dossier had already been made available to the judging judge and the associate officers during this trial, which was supposed to prove Dreyfus' guilt by means of out of context documents and also the first Contained forgeries involving Major Hubert Henry. The secret dossier was not made available to Dreyfus' defense, making the trial illegal.
During the summer of 1896, Major Marie-Georges Picquart - the new head of the Deuxième Bureau , one of the two branches of the French intelligence service - became increasingly aware that Alfred Dreyfus had been wrongly convicted. Picquart initially found evidence that an informant was still providing the German military attaché with military secrets after Dreyfus' arrest, and finally discovered that the handwriting of the Bordereau was identical to that of the highly indebted French major Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy. Picquart communicated this first orally and then in writing to his two superiors, Chief of Staff Raoul Le Mouton de Boisdeffre and General Charles Arthur Gonse . However, General Gonse in particular insisted that Picquart treat the Esterhazy and Dreyfus cases as separate affairs. Picquart advised General Gonse to act as quickly as possible and arrest Esterhazy in order to avert damage to the general staff. In a meeting with Gonse on September 15, 1896, of which only records from Picquart are available, Gonse made it clear to Picquart that he was prepared to accept the conviction of an innocent man to the reputation of the former Secretary of War Auguste Mercier and that of the military governor of To spare Paris, General Félix Saussier , who both had driven the trial against Dreyfus significantly. Gonse also indicated to Picquart that his silence was essential to cover up the matter.
Major Henry's fake
Picquart had initially kept silent about his suspicions about Esterhazy, as ordered. As the Dreyfus affair came to a head, the circle around General Gonse Picquart probably thought it was the weakest link in their defense chain. Gonse ordered him on October 27th to go on an inspection tour of the French province. Major Hubert Henry saw Picquart's absence as an opportunity to recommend himself to the General Staff as Picquart's successor. Either on October 30 or November 1, 1896, he obtained a letter from the Italian military attaché, Major Alessandro Panizzardi, to Schwartzkoppen, dated this previously dated letter to June 14, 1894 and added another text between the salutation and signature, in Dreyfus was named and it was indicated that Dreyfus had sold information to them. Ruth Harris describes Major Henry's attempt at forgery as almost grotesquely amateurish. Henry's handwriting not only differed significantly from the Panizzardis, the forgery, now known as faux Henry , was also glued together from two different types of paper, which had to be noticed on closer inspection. Henry delivered this document to General Gonse on November 2nd, who, together with General Boisdeffre, shortly thereafter informed the Secretary of War of Henry's new "discovery".
The use of a secret dossier and thus the illegality of the process was discussed in the press as early as 1897. Lucie Dreyfus therefore made several requests to restart the process. She found accommodation only after several changes of government. The new Minister of War, Godefroy Cavaignac , had the evidence re-examined by his staff. The two examining officers noticed very quickly that Le faux Henry consists of two different types of paper. Cavaignac asked Major Hubert Henry about this in the presence of General de Boisdeffre and General Armand du Paty de Clam , both of whom were also involved in the affair. After initially denying it, Henry admitted his falsification under the pressure of questioning. He was then arrested and taken to the Mont Valérien military prison. There he committed suicide on August 31, 1898 by cutting his throat with a razor. Cavaignac and Boisdeffre then both resigned from their offices.
The Dreyfus case was tried again in a court martial in 1899. Dreyfus was found guilty again, but his sentence was reduced to ten years in a fortress. Shortly afterwards, the Waldeck-Rousseau government pardoned him . It was not until July 12, 1906, that the Court of Cassation overturned the judgment against Dreyfus and fully rehabilitated him. Dreyfus was accepted back into the army, promoted to major and also made a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Picquart, who had meanwhile been released from the army and imprisoned for divulging official secrets, returned to the army with the rank of brigadier general.
literature
- 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 .
- 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 .