This is a biographical work and has as its focus Gaetano Salvemini, one of the most influential Italian intellectuals of his generation. Salvemini (1873 - 1957) was professor of early modern history, through his teaching, his activism in the Italian Socialist Party, his fight for universal suffrage, the discussions in his journal L’Unità (funded after his exit from the Socialist Party), and his tireless anti-fascism, mentored a new generation of young intellectuals and political activists, such as Ernesto Rossi, Carlo and Nello Rosselli, only to mention a few names. After losing his wife and children in the 1908 Messina earthquake, Salvemini began a new family life with his second wife, Fernande Dauriac, and her two children Jean and Ghita (by her first husband Julien Luchaire). Many works by scholars have been dedicated to Salvemini’s political activity, however, no one has yet studied the story of Salvemini’s second family, its involvement with fascism and Salvemini's intransigence towards it. By exploiting hitherto unused archival sources, my work uncovers the personal costs of Salvemini’s anti-fascism, including the tragic embrace of fascism by the son of his French wife. Salvemini’s ties to his stepson, Jean Luchaire, were especially strong. Such bonds were tested and ultimately broken by Salvemini’s commitment to fighting fascism and his stepson’s embrace of it in France. Therefore, the novelty of this biography is represented by two objectives: a) to uncover part of Salvemini’s familial life that has not been studied before; and b) to investigate the challenges in the relationship between Salvemini’s private life and his public position as an anti-fascist intellectual, proving his political consistency, no longer from an “outside” point of view (that of his public career), but from an “inside” perspective (that of his personal vicissitudes, challenged by Jean’s pro-Nazi views).
Fantarella, Filomena,
"Broken Circle: The Family of Gaetano Salvemini under Fascism"
(2016).
Italian Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z01Z42T4
