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Joseph Reinach

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JOSEPH REINACH (1856-), French author and politician, was born in Paris on the 30th of September 1856. After leaving the Lycee Condorcet he studied for the bar, being called in 1887. He attracted the attention of Gambetta by articles on Balkan politics published in the Revue bleue, and joined the staff of the Republique frangaise. In Gambetta's grand ministere M. Reinach was his secretary, and drew up the case for a partial revision of the constitution and for the electoral method known as the scrutin de liste. In the Republique frangaise he waged a steady war against General Boulanger which brought him three duels, one with Edmond Magnier and two with Paul Deroulede. Between 1889 and 1898 he sat for the Chamber of Deputies for Digne. As member of the army commission, reporter of the budgets of the ministries of the interior and of agriculture he brought forward bills for the better treatment of the insane, for the establishment of a colonial ministry, for the taxation of alcohol, and for the reparation of judicial errors. He advocated complete freedom of the theatre and the press, the abolition of public executions, and denounced political corruption of all kinds. He was indirectly implicated in the Panama scandals through his father-in-law, Baron de Reinach, though he made restitution as soon as he learned that he was benefiting by fraud. But he is best known as the champion of Captain Dreyfus. At the time of the original trial he attempted to secure a public hearing of the case, and in 1897 he allied himself with Scheurer-Kestner to demand its revision. He denounced in the Siècle the Henry forgery, and Esterhazy's complicity. His articles in the Siècle aroused the fury of the anti-Dreyfusard party, especially as he was himself a Jew and therefore open to the charge of having undertaken to defend the innocence of Dreyfus on racial grounds. He lost his seat in the Chamber of Deputies, and, having refused to fight Henri Rochefort, eventually brought an action for libel against him. Finally, the "affaire" being terminated and Dreyfus pardoned, he undertook to write the history of the case, the first four volumes of which appeared in 1901. This was completed in 1905. In 1906 M. Reinach was re-elected for Digne. In that year he became member of the commission of the national archives, and next year of the council on prisons. Reinach was a voluminous writer on political subjects. On Gambetta he published three volumes in 1884, and he also edited his speeches. For the criticisms of the anti-Dreyfusard press see Henri Dutrait-Croyon, Joseph Reinach, historien (Paris, 1905), a violent criticism in detail of Reinach's history of the "affaire." His brother, the well-known savant, Salomon Reinach (1858-), born at St Germain-en-Laye on the 29th of August 1858, was educated at the Ecole normale superieure, and joined the French school at Athens in 1879. He made valuable archaeological discoveries at Myrina near Smyrna in 1880-82, at Cyme in 1881, at Thasos, Imbros and Lesbos (1882), at Carthage and Meninx (1883-84), at Odessa (1893) and elsewhere. He received honours from the chief learned societies of Europe, and in 1886 received an appointment at the National Museum of Antiquities at St Germain; in 1893 he became assistant keeper, and in 1902 keeper of the national museums. In 1903 he became joint editor of the Revue archdologique, and in the same year officer of the Legion of Honour. The lectures he delivered on art at the Ecole du Louvre in 1902-3 were published by him under the title of Apollo. This book has been translated into most European languages, and is one of the most compact handbooks of the subject.

His first published work was a translation of Schopenhauer's Essay on Free Will (1877), which passed through many editions. This was followed by many works and articles in the learned reviews of which a list - up to 1903 - is available in Bibliographie de S. R. (Angers, 1903). His Manuel de philologie classique (1880-1884) was crowned by the French association for the study of Greek; his Grammaire latine (1886) received a prize from the Society of Secondary Education; La Necropole de Myrina (1887), written with E. Pottier, and Antiquites nationales were crowned by the Academy of Inscriptions. He compiled an important Repertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine (3 vols., 1897-98); also Repertoire de peintures du moyen age et de la Renaissance1280-1580 (1905, &c.); Repertoire des vases peints grecs et etrusques (1900). In 1905 he began his Cultes, mythes et religions; and in 1909 he published a general sketch of the history of religions under the title of Orpheus. He also translated from the English H. C. Lea's History of the Inquisition. A younger brother, THEODORE REINACH (1860-), also had a brilliant career as a scholar. He pleaded at the Parisian bar in 1881-86, but eventually gave himself up to the study of numismatics. He wrote important works on the ancient kingdoms of Asia Minor - Trois royaumes de l'Asie Mineure, Cappadoce, Bithynie, Pont (1888), Mithridate Eupator (1890); also a critical edition and translation with H. Weil of Plutarch's Treatise on Music; and an Histoire des Israelites depuis la mine de leur inddpendance nationale jusqu'd nos jours (2nd ed., 1901). From 1888 to 1897 he edited the Revue des etudes grecques.,