ZOLA (Emile)

Lot 261
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ZOLA (Emile)
L'Aurore newspaper. Number 87 of Thursday, January 13, 1898. This issue publishes the very famous open letter to the President of the Republic of Emile Zola: "I accuse...! Tears. Framed, under glass. In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a French staff officer of Alsatian origin and of Jewish origin, wrongly accused of having delivered documents to Germany, was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Devil's Island in French Guiana. His family is organizing his defense. The real traitor was identified in November 1897 as Commander Walsin Esterhazy, a fact acknowledged by Lieutenant-Colonel Georges Picquart, head of the military intelligence service. But Picquart was dismissed by the general staff, an attempt to prevent any judicial resumption of the case. Nevertheless, the subsequent expansion of support for Dreyfus forced the army staff to bring Commander Esterhazy before the War Council; he was unanimously acquitted on 11 January 1898. It is this scandalous verdict that prompted Émile Zola to intervene very strongly, exposing himself personally to prosecution in the criminal courts, before a civilian and non-military court. By making nominative accusations in the press against ten actors in the case ("I Accuse!"), including the Minister of War and the Chief of Staff of the Army, the novelist knows that he is subject to the Press Freedom Act of 29 July 1881; he even writes it at the end of his text. Zola actually appeared in February 1898. Although the President of the Court forbids talking about the Dreyfus case, more than one hundred witnesses manage to express themselves. Zola was sentenced to the maximum of his sentence and went into exile in London. But the trial brought to light the flaws of the prosecution against Alfred Dreyfus, which resulted, a few months later, in the review of his case (the Rennes trial in 1899, followed by his immediate pardon, and his rehabilitation by the Court of Cassation in 1906). "I Accuse...",
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