'Dreyfus, like Judas and all Jews, was a traitor who had betrayed France to the hereditary enemy Germany,' Isenschmid summarizes the mood at the time. The public and the press spread hateful, highly racist antisemitic views, Isenschmid writes in his book. It was a full-blown judicial scandal that quickly turned into a political and cultural crisis. Although Dreyfus was innocent, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Marcel Proust began exploring his Jewish identity during the Dreyfus affair, which he witnessed first-hand in Paris at the age of 23, when the French Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus was accused of treason in 1894. Antisemitism in France: The Dreyfus Affair As Isenschmid points out in his new book 'Der Elefant im Raum - Proust und das Jüdische' (The Elephant in the Room - Proust and Jewishness), being Jewish was not just a minor matter for Proust, but shaped his life and his writing - especially his most famous work. Andreas Isenschmid also published a Proust biography in 2017 Image: Paula Winkler In a new essay, German literary critic Andreas Isenschmid points out that one aspect of Marcel Proust's life has long been overlooked: The author was of Jewish origin.īorn in 1871 as the son of a doctor and a Jewish Frenchwoman named Jeanne Weil, Proust was baptized as a Catholic but was also in close contact with his mother's Jewish faith and traditions. His mother never converted to Catholicism and married Proust's father only in a civil ceremony, remaining faithful to the Jewish religion throughout her life. While not everyone may have read all seven volumes of the mammoth work, its author remains a global literature star, even 100 years after his death on November 18, 1922. French author Marcel Proust is above all renowned for his record-breaking book: His 4,000-page novel 'In Search of Lost Time' (1913-1927) belongs to the canon of world literature.

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