Lucie Dreyfus

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Lucie Dreyfus
Lucie c. 1891
Born23 August 1869
Died14 December 1945
SpouseAlfred Dreyfus
Alfred, Lucie, Pierre Léon and Jeanne

Lucie Dreyfus-Hadamard (23 August 1869 – 14 December 1945) was the wife of Alfred Dreyfus.

Life[edit]

Lucie Hadamard was born into a Parisian Jewish family in 1869. She married Alfred Dreyfus in 1890. The pair had two children: Pierre, born 1891, and Jeanne, born 1893.[1]

In 1894, as part of the Dreyfus Affair, Alfred Dreyfus was court-martialed for espionage and sentenced to a penal colony. Lucie worked to convince French authorities to exonerate her husband. She petitioned Parliament in 1896 but her petition was denied. In 1898 she published a collection of his letters under the title Letters of an Innocent. A subsequent petition resulted in a second court-martial being convened, which ultimately resulted in Alfred's exoneration.[1]

During the First World War Lucie worked as a Red Cross nurse. Alfred died in 1935. During the Second World War, Lucie lived in a convent to avoid becoming a victim of the Holocaust; a granddaughter, Madeleine Lévy, was killed in Auschwitz. Lucie died in Paris in 1945.[1][2]

Cultural depictions[edit]

In Dreyfus (1930, Germany) Lucie Dreyfus was played by Grete Mosheim.

In Dreyfus (1931, UK) she was played by Beatrix Thomson.

In The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Lucie was played by Gale Sondergaard.

In the 1958 film I Accuse!, Lucie was played by Viveca Lindfors.

In An Officer and a Spy (2020; French: J'Accuse), Lucie was played by Swan Starosta.

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c "The Dreyfus Affair: Voices of Honor" (PDF). United States Naval Academy. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
  2. ^ Gabriela Geselowitz (9 May 2017). "The Holocaust as Prop". Tablet.

Further reading[edit]

  • Jean-Denis Bredin (2019). The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman. Plunkett Lake Press.
  • Tom Conner (2014). The Dreyfus Affair and the Rise of the French Public Intellectual. McFarland. ISBN 9780786478620.
  • Ruth Harris (2010). Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century. Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 9781429958028.
  • Piers Paul Read (2012). The Dreyfus Affair. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781408801390.
  • Norman Simms (2014). Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus in the Phantasmagoria. Cambridge Scholars Publisher. ISBN 9781443860765.

External links[edit]