DREXEL, ANTHONY JOSEPH (1826-1893), American banker, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 13th of September 1826. He was the son of Francis M. Drexel (1792-1863), a native of Austrian Tirol, who emigrated to America in 1817, and, after some years spent as a portrait-painter, became a banker and the founder of the house of Drexel & Company. Anthony, who entered his father’s counting-house in 1839, eventually, with his brothers Francis and Joseph, succeeded to the control of the business, and organized the banking houses of Drexel, Morgan & Company, New York, of which his brother Joseph W. (1833-1888) was long the resident head, and of Drexel, Harjes & Company, Paris. In 1864 he joined his friend George W. Childs in the purchase of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and with him in 1892 founded the Printers’ Home for union men at Colorado Springs. In 1891 he founded, and endowed with $2,000,000, the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia, the buildings for which he constructed at a cost of $750,000. This institution provides technical instruction for both night and day classes and public lecture courses, and has a good museum and a library of 35,000 volumes. Drexel died at Carlsbad, Germany, on the 30th of June 1893.
DREYFUS, ALFRED (1859- ), French soldier, of Jewish parentage, the scandal of whose condemnation for treason and subsequent rehabilitation convulsed French political life between 1894 and 1899, and only ended in 1906, was born in Mülhausen, Upper Alsace, removing to Paris in 1874. After going through the usual course of military instruction with credit, he became a sous-lieutenant in the artillery in 1882, and was promoted captain in 1889; and, after passing through the École de Guerre with distinction, he was appointed to the general staff. His name was, however, unknown to the general public till he was arrested on the 15th of October 1894 on a charge of selling military secrets to Germany, condemned, publicly degraded (January 4, 1895), and transported (March 10) to the Ile du Diable, French Guiana. The story of the subsequent proceedings in this celebrated case is told in the article [Anti-Semitism], and need not here be repeated. It was not till 1899 that the unfortunate prisoner was brought back to France for retrial by court-martial, and even then, so strong was the anti-Semitic and military prejudice, he was again found guilty “with extenuating circumstances” at Rennes (September 9), though ten days later he was “pardoned” by President Loubet. It was not till the Cour de Cassation ordered a further investigation, and on the 12th of July 1906 decided that his conviction had been based on a forgery and that Dreyfus was innocent, that the agitation came to a final conclusion. He was then restored to his rank in the army and promoted major. But the anti-Semitic and anti-Dreyfusard spirit in certain French circles could not easily be quelled even then; and on the occasion of the translation of the remains of Emile Zola (Dreyfus’s determined champion) to the Pantheon on the 4th of June 1908, Major Dreyfus was shot at and wounded by a fanatical journalist named Gregori, who was subsequently acquitted by a Paris jury of the charge of attempted murder, his own plea being that he had merely intended a “demonstration.”
See Dreyfus’s own Five Years of my Life (1901), and literature cited under [Anti-Semitism].
DRIBURG, a town and spa of Germany, in Prussian Westphalia, pleasantly situated on the Aa and the railway Soest-Höxter-Berlin. Pop. 2600. It has an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church and some glass manufactures. It is celebrated for its saline-ferruginous springs, discovered in 766, and since 1779 largely frequented in summer. In the vicinity are the ruins of Iburg, a castle destroyed by Charlemagne in 775, and bestowed by him upon the bishopric of Paderborn.
DRIFFIELD (officially Great Driffield), a market town in the Buckrose parliamentary division of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, 19½ m. N. by W. from Hull, the junction of several branch lines of the North Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5766. It is pleasantly situated at the foot of the Wolds, and is connected with Hull by a navigable canal. The church of All Saints is of various dates from Norman onwards. The town is the centre of a rich agricultural district, and large markets and fairs are held. There are works for the manufacture of oil-cake. Driffield is of high antiquity, and numerous tumuli are seen in the vicinity, while there is an excellent private antiquarian museum in the town.