Jean Sandherr (6 June 1846-24 May 1897) was a French Army officer who, as chief of military intelligence, was involved in the Dreyfus affair of the 1890s.
Biography[]
Jean Sandherr was born in Mulhouse, Alsace, France on 6 June 1846, sharing a hometown with Alfred Dreyfus and his family. He graduated from Saint-Cyr before serving in the French Army, and he was wounded during the Franco-Prussian War before being named a Knight of the Legion of Honor in September 1870. He also commanded a regiment of Algerian tirailleurs during the annexation of Tunisia, and he was charged with classifying Tunisian tribes by their hostility to the French presence. In 1885, Sandherr was promoted to Major and assigned to the army's statistical section, taking command in 1887 and becoming a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1891. While serving under General Charles-Arthur Gonse, he discovered that French military secrets had been handed over to the Germans, and the xenophobic Sandherr hastily identified Captain Dreyfuss as the perpetrator, in spite of his list of 2,500 suspected traitors to France not including a single Jew. On 14 April 1895, Sandherr was promoted to Colonel, and he took command of the 20th Infantry Regiment at Montauban that same year. Georges Picquart took over the statistical section after Sandherr fell ill with syphilis, and he left active service in December 1896 and died in 1897 before the scandal came to light a year later.