Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen
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Maximilian Friedrich Wilhelm August Leopold von Schwartzkoppen (24 February 1850 – 8 January 1917 ) was a Prussian military officer, later given the rank of General of the Infantry, and German military attaché in Paris. He is best known for his role in the Dreyfus Affair.
Life and career
He was born in Potsdam, Brandenburg, the son of Prussian general Emil von Schwartzkoppen (1810–1878) and his wife Anna Marie Luise, née von Ditfurth (1816–1865). The Schwartzkoppen family, ennobled in 1688, descended from Brunswick. Schwartzkoppen joined the Prussian Army in the late 1860s and took part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. He served as a member of the general staff in the rank of captain (Hauptmann) from 1885 to 1888 and thereupon became adjutant of Prince Ernest Louis of Hesse.
On 10 December 1891, Schwartzkoppen took office as military attaché of the German Empire in Paris, maintaining relations with the French Republic. His subisidiary task was obtain secret informations on the French Army, and he became involved in the Dreyfus Affair. In 1894, he received an anonymous offer for the purchase of rather insignificant military intelligence, outlined in an unsigned "bordereau". The torn paper, supposedly in the handwriting of Alfred Dreyfus, was recovered from Schwartzkoppen's wastebasket by a cleaning woman on September 25; it became the key evidence of his conviction for treason.
Serious doubts regarding the guilt of Dreyfus were raised already during his trial. Later investigations showed that Schwartzkoppen was receiving intelligence from not Dreyfus but the French officer Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.[1][2] Schwartzkoppen himself confirmed Dreyfus' innocence in his memoirs, published posthumously in 1930.
References
- ↑ Robert Harris (17 January 2014). "The Whistle-Blower Who Freed Dreyfus". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). Retrieved 28 November 2014.
- ↑ Adam Gopnik (September 28, 2009). "Trial of the Century: Revisiting the Dreyfus affair". The New Yorker (Condé Nast). Retrieved 26 June 2015.
External links
- Works by or about Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen at Internet Archive
- Works by or about Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen from the German National Library
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