Talk:Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy

NPOV
His Career: ..."He sank"...this is really not NPOV. Not even close! What became of him after the Dreyfus affair?

At some stage he fled to Britain and attempted an anonymous existence in Harpenden (Station Road), Herts

In this article, the author tries to persuade the reader that Esterhazy was a squanderer and essentially a bad person. He wasn’t truly French, he had no personal ties. His family was Hungarian and he didn’t really earn all of the military valor he received so much as he had the right connections and it was the right time. The author assumes that Esterhazy became a spy because of fate. This assumption overlooks the fact that perhaps it was hatred for France (which he mentions explicitly) or monetary reasons (as he does other despicable things for money). The phrases, “destined to become the prey of treason” as well as “fate decreed” seem unconvincing, particularly after the author describes the terrible things that Esterhazy said about France. It is a very conscious decision to sell secrets of your country to another country. Treason is not something anyone goes about lightly, this is evident in the fact that Esterhazy was very careful about lying to the Germans as well as the French. He had to prove his qualifications to the Germans and maintain innocence among the French. It seems that Esterhazy wasn’t a very good spy in the fact that Germans doubted his qualification and the importance of his information. Based on that fact, it seems odd that he would continue. Perhaps he was already so entangled in treason it was easier to continue, or perhaps he thought he could get more pertinent information. Either way, the article doesn’t really hypothesize. This article also doesn’t mention what Esterhazy was doing during the Dreyfus affair or how and when it was discovered that he was the culprit. It seems that that would have been very interesting and pertinent to include rather than just stating that he was the culprit. While most people have heard of Alfred Dreyfus and the Dreyfus Affair, it seems that few know much about Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. It also fails to discuss how and why Dreyfus was picked as a cover. It seems like it would be interesting to see what the connection between the two is. The article is not completely worthless however. In discussing Esterhazy’s career, it references his own letters wherein he “predict[s] and hope[s] that new disasters were in store [for France],” which is interesting. It would be easy to predict something that you are helping to plan. It seems the author could have placed a stronger emphasis on the connection between this observation and Esterhazy’s role in actually selling military secrets. Prior to becoming a spy, he is described as “plung[ing] afresh into a life of speculation and excess, which soon completed his ruin,” but it does not discuss how particularly he was ruined. He still had the titles of lieutenant, captain, decoration, and major in the French army. It seems that that would be his saving grace as far as his reputation is concerned since he didn’t seem to have much else going for him. Instead of being appreciative of the French army, the author says that he “considered himself wronged,” although it doesn’t say what the wrong specifically was. Overall, the article is an interesting topic but fails to address major questions that epitomize the subject.

Incomplete
The article seem incomplete; doesn't really address the Dreyfus affair in detail; ends abruptly in 1894; what happened afterward? --FeanorStar7 06:38, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I received a source that said Esterhazy, although guilty of forging the evidence against Dreyfus and likeley a traitor in other regards, was not actually responsible for the particular crime. The guilty one, in my source (given by a teacher, and so I can't tell you where I found it) was a man named Dubois in the Artillery. He was originally ruled out because he was not on the general staff, while dreyfus was. [UNSIGNED]

This unsigned comment seems confused. The one genuine piece of evidence was the document (the bordereau) that had been provided to the Germans. This was originally alleged to point to Dreyfus, but it was also the evidence that later led Picquart to Esterhazy, because he recognized Esterhazy's writing. Additional evidence against Dreyfus was indeed forged, but that forgery was undertaken by a Major Henry. Nandt1 (talk) 21:00, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

He is supposed to have admitted his guilt whilst in England, so as to get money for his account of the crime. I find this in a book catalogue, for a 1938 detective story called “A Modern Portia”, by ‘Paul Trent’ [pen name of the lawyer Edward Platt]:

In the days before Platt gave up the law to become a writer, it was in his office that Count Esterhazy dictated the confession which unravelled the Dreyfus Affair.

More info on Edward Platt and Esterhazy's confession would improve the article. 2A00:23C7:E287:1900:6164:96C7:764C:41AC (talk) 14:45, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

NPOV
As already mentioned, this article definitely is not NPOV and should be rewritten. Unfortunately I have no source material on Esterhazy so I can't do much about it. I'm certain more recent sources then a contemporary edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica can be found. Note, both the French and German wikipedias only have stubs about Esterhazy.--Caranorn 23:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is terribly florid and overwritten. Can someone tone down the melodrama a bit? Darkmind1970 10:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Article needs organization. The introduction is better than the career section, but is disorganized.Career needs to be trashed. I've never read anything worse in my life. Elsweyn (talk) 07:52, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Seems to me to be very biased in talks of his personal life, time in Tunis (it speciffically mentions in what seems to me to be a dispariging tone that "he did nothing whatever to distinguish himself in it," it would seem to be better to state that he served without distinction), and marraige. I am not an expert on Esterhazy, so I cannot be sure, but this article just feels one-sided. Rhhyyyyyyy 22:05, 7 March 2009

Updated the article.
The neutrality tag was two years old, and my impression, as a fresh reader, is that the article is now reasonably balanced, so I removed the tag. I did tag the Post-War section, but only because it lacks citations; otherwise, it's OK. Also did a little minor cleanup. About the Revisionist section...though the hypothesis has no academic support, I think it's a fascinating hypothesis, by no means crackpot, and its author is a legitimate scholar. I think the section, including the demurral, should stay. J M Rice (talk) 09:59, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Revisionism redux
I intitally tried to accommodate in the main article an addition which argued against the French Wikipedia conclusion that the revisionist argument has not been accepted by other modern authors by reference to a recent Canadian work of detective fiction, set against the backdrop of the Dreyfus Affair, which talks of Esterhazy as an "unwitting" double agent. However, the entry turned out to come from an unregistered account that is being used for the purpose of vandalism, and I am in any case not sure that a novel really counts in this context. For anyone who may be interested, however, here is the section after I had edited it:

"The novel 'A Man in Uniform: A Novel' by the Canadian author Kate Taylor, first published in Canada in 2010, a fictional detective story set in Paris at the end of the 19th century and based on the Dreyfus Affair, does, nonetheless, contain a reference to Esterhazy as the 'unwitting double agent' of a character named Masson." Nandt1 (talk) 12:02, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Our anonymous friend is persistent and keeps coming back to this point, so I have decided to use this text after all. Nandt1 (talk) 19:29, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Message for User 24.15.121.116
Hello. You have several times deleted material from this article on Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy -- material which has been translated from an article on the Dreyfus Affair in the French version of Wikipedia -- claiming that Wikipedia does not permit copying from one article to another. This is an incorrect understanding of Wikipedia policy. Indeed, Wikipedia fully allows for strengthening articles in one language version with material translated from another. Please see, for example, the article "Wikipedia: Copying within Wikipedia". Please do not continue deleting material in Wikipedia articles based on a misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy. Thank you. Nandt1 (talk) 21:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * However, text moved must be held to the same standards as original text. The French Wikipedia article does not cite any sources for its statement, it is unsourced commentary.  Translated unsourced commentary is still unsourced commentary.  Copying from the French Wikipedia to the English Wikipedia is copying from one part of the same project to a different part; not copying between separate works.  Thus, the statement that citing French Wikipedia was circular citing is correct, as the source of the information was Wikipedia, not a reliable source which the French Wikipedia should have cited for its information.  Ian.thomson (talk) 21:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Birthplace
Was he born in Hungary or France? The article says the former; the infobox says the latter. 12.239.145.114 (talk) 00:50, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Help adding photo of when he was younger
There is a photo used on the German wiki article that I am having problems adding to this English page. Can anyione help please. The image is here --Mystichumwipe (talk) 12:06, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Wrong Henri Giscard d'Estaing
Henri Giscard d'Estaing was only a child when the book about the Dreyfus affair was written, so it must be another person with the same name. We tried to figure out who - there was another person in the family called Henri, who is the right age and was a retired artillery office, so it's very possibly him, but we've no evidence to be sure. That discussion is archived here. I'll change the link in the article to avoid the mixup. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 08:42, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

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Guilty?
Since he was never found guilty by a court, how can the article claim that he was "actual perpetrator of the act of treason"?

Same way you can claim that O.J. killed his wife. Guilty in fact is not the same as guilty in law. 2A00:23C7:E287:1900:6164:96C7:764C:41AC (talk) 14:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)