Francesco Crispi

Francesco Crispi (about 1893)

Francesco Crispi (born October 4, 1818 in Ribera , Sicily , † August 11, 1901 in Naples ) was an Italian revolutionary , statesman and politician . During his tenure as President of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister), he primarily drove the colonial expansion of his country forward.

biography

Francesco Crispi was born in Ribera, Sicily. He was the son of an Arbëresh family, the long-established Albanian minority in Italy who fled the Ottomans to Italy in the late 15th century.

Crispi had to spend eleven years in exile in Piedmont because of his participation in the revolution of 1848 in the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies . There he was also active as a journalist. During this time his attitude changed from the demand for an autonomy of Sicily to support an all-Italian nation-state. In 1853, Crispi was accused of being involved in riots in Milan , after which he fled to Malta , London and Paris . After his return in 1859, he organized a successful uprising against the Bourbon king Francis II on behalf of Mazzini in Sicily , thus creating the conditions for Garibaldi's “ Train of a Thousand ”. He supported the annexation of Naples-Sicily to Piedmont to form the Kingdom of Italy in 1860 and, although he thereby supported the monarchy, belongs to the parliament of the new state as a member of the radical left and twice took over the office of interior minister . From 1876 to 1877 he was also President of the Chamber of Deputies . In 1878 Crispi had to retire from politics for a short time because he was accused of bigamy , but was then acquitted. From 1887 he was Prime Minister with two interruptions until 1896; at the same time he held the function of interior minister and foreign minister between July 1887 and February 1891 .

In the face of a divided opposition weakened by scandals, Crispi ruled authoritarian and, above all, suppressed the working class. In 1893 he was involved in a scandal over the Banca Roma . To combat the uprising of the Fasci Siciliani , he declared a state of emergency in Sicily in January 1894 and sent General Roberto Morra di Lavriano to the unrest area at the head of a force of 40,000 men. His domestic policy was marked by tax increases and austerity measures. In terms of foreign policy, Crispi turned to the German Empire and propagated a resolute colonial policy, but the conquest of the Abyssinia Empire in the Italian-Ethiopian War failed. After the defeat by Menelik's imperial army at the Battle of Adua on March 1, 1896, Crispi was personally held responsible for this "national disgrace" and had to resign. He then wrote his memoirs in which he justified his policy. Crispi died in Naples on August 11, 1901.

His body was first embalmed by taxidermists from Naples, but their methods proved inadequate. A year later, the chemist Alfredo Salafia was commissioned to save the body, which he succeeded in several months of work. He was also able to restore Crispi's facial features through paraffin injections . His corpse is considered an important mummy of the 20th century due to Salafia's innovative conservation method.

literature

• Hans Barth: Crispi. With the judgments of outstanding contemporaries. Renger, Leipzig 1893.
• Fausto Fonzi:  Crispi, Francesco. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 30:  Cosattini – Crispolto. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1984.

Web links

Commons : Francesco Crispi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Francesco Crispi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Francesco Crispi in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Entry in the Portale storico of the Camera dei deputati

Individual evidence

1. ^ Paul Koudounaris, The Immaculate Corpses of Dr Alfredo Salafia at the Palermo Catacombs (Palermo, Sicily, Italy) , accessed November 5, 2012