11 Facts About Joseph Reinach

Joseph Reinach was a French author and politician.

Joseph Reinach attracted the attention of Leon Gambetta by writing articles on Balkan politics for the Revue bleue, and joined the staff of the Republique francaise.

In Gambetta's grand ministere, Reinach was his secretary and tried to obtain a partial revision of the constitution and list proportional representation.

Joseph Reinach advocated complete freedom of the theatre and the press, the abolition of public executions, and denounced political corruption of all kinds.

However, Joseph Reinach is best known as the champion of Alfred Dreyfus.

Joseph Reinach denounced in the Siecle the Henry forgery and Esterhazy's complicity.

Joseph Reinach's articles in the Siecle aroused the fury of the anti-Dreyfus party, especially as Reinach was a Jew and was accused by some of taking up Dreyfus's defence on racial grounds.

Joseph Reinach lost his seat in the Chamber of Deputies and, having refused to fight Henri Rochefort, an anti-Dreyfus journalist, eventually brought an action for libel against the latter.

Finally, Dreyfus was pardoned, Joseph Reinach wrote a history of the case that was completed in 1905.

Joseph Reinach published three volumes on Leon Gambetta in 1884 and edited Gambetta's speeches.

Joseph Reinach was killed in the first month of the First World War, in August 1914.