In 1983, the French Ministry of Culture commissioned a statue of Captain Alfred Dreyfus from the Polish-born Jewish caricaturist and sculptor Leyzor (Louis) Mittelberg, who created under the pseudonym Tim (1919-2002). For two years after its completion in 1986, the sculpture was not presented to the public - it stood in the foundry awaiting a decision by the Paris authorities on the location of the monument. The political wrangling over the statue's placement in the public space was of concern to many French people due to the still lively emotions surrounding the Dreyfus affair, which deeply divided French society at the turn of the 20th century.

History of the creation of the sculpture

In 1983, a government programme to build monuments to forgotten national heroes was launched in France. Tim, who is widely recognised for his cartooning work, including for Le Monde, Time and the New York Times, was chosen as the artist for one of the monuments. The artist was given a list with 10 subjects to work on. His choice fell on Alfred Dreyfus.

The Dreyfus affair

Dreyfus was a French officer of Jewish descent who, in 1894, was accused and sentenced to life exile to Devil's Island in French Guiana for spying for Germany. As it turned out after time, he was sentenced unjustly, which the authorities refused to acknowledge even after his defence lawyers had submitted exculpatory evidence against the convict. The trial, which lasted more than a decade, of the protagonist of one of the most notorious espionage scandals in history, revealed negligence, the preparation of evidence, corruption and anti-Semitism among representatives of the French army, judiciary and authorities, causing one of the greatest political crises of the Third Republic. The affair also highlighted the wider problem of the integration of Jews into French society, contributing, among other things, to the postulation of the creation of an independent Jewish state (Der Judenstaat) in the German and Austrian press by the Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl in 1895. The Dreyfus affair aroused international interest. Eventually, in 1899. France's then president, Émile Loubet, issued an act of pardon for Dreyfus. However, it was not until 1906 that the soldier was fully rehabilitated. The day after the verdict acquitting Dreyfus was pronounced, on 13 July 1906, he was readmitted to the army to make amends for the moral damages he had suffered in a higher position than before, with the rank of major.

The dispute over the location of the statue - the so-called new Dreyfus affair

Tim depicted Dreyfus in a soldier's uniform, standing at attention and holding a broken sword at face level as a sign of the humiliation he had suffered. At his feet is a plaque with an engraved inscription of the portrayed man's words: "If you want me to live, give me honour".

The Polish-Jewish sculptor proposed that the monument be symbolically located in the courtyard of the École Militaire - on the spot where Dreyfus was deposed in 1895. The then French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, agreed to this location for the monument. However, this decision did not meet with either the favour of the Minister of Defence, Charles Hern, raising objections to such a solution due to the inaccessibility of the courtyard to the general public, or the acceptance of the then President François Mitterrand, who believed that "soldiers should be set an example, not a reproach". Nor was the subsequent idea to place the sculpture in Paris's Place Dauphine, at the western end of the Île de la Cité, near the Palace of Justice and the Court of Appeal, which had rehabilitated the soldier in 1906, accepted. It was only after Mitterand's re-election victory in the presidential election, the resignation of Jacques Chirac's second government and the Socialist party's assumption of power in 1988, that the monument was inaugurated. On the initiative of Chirac, who at the time served as mayor of Paris, the sculpture was unveiled on the centenary of Dreyfus' arrest in the Place Pierre Lafue, near the former Cherche-Midi prison where the degraded soldier was held in 1894.

Copies of the memorial at the Museum of the History and Art of Judaism and the French Institute in Tel Aviv-Jafa

In 2003, on the occasion of the organisation of Tim's retrospective exhibition - 'Tim, être de son temps' - an enlarged version of the Dreyfus statue made in epoxy resin, imitating bronze, was placed in the courtyard of the Paris Museum of the History and Art of Judaism. The slender, austere figure, reminiscent of Alberto Giacometti's realisations, contrasts with the warm colours of the façade of the museum's 17th-century headquarters at the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan, evoking an important event for an institution focused on the history of the Jews in France.

In 2018, a bronze copy of the monument was located near the French Institute in Tel Aviv.