Antonio Segni

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Antonio Segni
Signature of Antonio Segni

Antonio Segni (born February 2, 1891 in Sassari , Sardinia , † December 1, 1972 in Rome ) was an Italian lawyer, university professor and politician ( DC ). He was Minister of Agriculture from 1947 to 1951 during the land reform period , then Minister of Education until 1954. From July 1955 to May 1957 and from February 1959 to March 1960 Segni was Prime Minister , from March 1960 to May 1962 Foreign Minister and from May 1962 to December 1964 the fourth President of the Republic of Italy .

life and career

education and profession

Segni came from a wealthy Sardinian landowner family. He studied law. While still a student he was a co-founder of a section of the Catholic Action in Sassari. He then became a lecturer in the Law Faculty of the University of Perugia . As a member of the national council of the Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI), he ran for parliamentary elections in 1924, but withdrew from politics when the fascists came to power. He then taught at the universities of Cagliari , Pavia and Sassari , where he was rector from 1946 to 1951.

Political career

From 1941 he became politically active again and was involved in building the Democrazia Cristiana , of which he became regional chairman in Sardinia. In 1946 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly and then re-elected in each of the subsequent parliamentary elections.

In the post-war governments of Ivanoe Bonomi , Ferruccio Parri and Alcide De Gasperi he was first deputy minister in 1945/46 and then until 1951 Minister for Agriculture and Forests. In this position, he partially reversed the land reform introduced by his communist predecessor Fausto Gullo . According to the compromise plan drawn up by Segni, 53% of the income generated from the fruits of the land should go to the tenants, the rest should remain with the previous landowners, who were however obliged to set aside 4% of their income for improvements. Expropriated large landowners were supposed to get their land back if the agricultural cooperatives to which it had been transferred did not comply with certain requirements. After the communists and socialists left the government, the former large landowners tried to prove this to the new farmers on a grand scale and thus reverse the redistribution. This concession to the mainly southern Italian elite paid off for the DC through significant gains in the next election in April 1948 .

Segni, like his party leader and Prime Minister De Gasperi, wanted to create a stratum of independent, self-owned peasants because they expected them to be immune to the ideology of communism as wage earners. So they represented a philosophy of contadinismo ("peasant ism"), similar to that of the former fascist agriculture minister Arrigo Serpieri . In May 1948, Segni announced a new, but this time non-communist land reform, through which the largest properties should be divided. After lengthy discussions and internal party conflicts between landowners and proponents of the reform, Segni presented an "extract law" (legge stralcio) in mid-1950 , which initially provided for a division of the largest lands in certain regions. Only uncultivated land was allowed to be expropriated and the previous owners were fully compensated by the state. Nevertheless, Segni described the reform as "the most important act of social renewal since the unification of Italy ." He was then jokingly called bolscevico bianco - "white ( i.e. Catholic) Bolshevik ". A law on agricultural contracts introduced by Segni, which took up some demands of the agricultural workers' unions, was thwarted by the landowners in the Senate and finally put aside. From 1951 he was Minister of Education for three years.

Segni (right) next to Konrad Adenauer and Walter Hallstein when the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957
Segni and Adenauer in Cadenabbia, August 1959

In 1955 he was appointed Prime Minister himself, he headed a coalition government consisting of DC, PSDI and PLI , which was also tolerated by the PRI and monarchists and lasted for almost two years. During his tenure in Rome in March 1957, the treaties establishing the EEC and Euratom (forerunner of the European Union ) were signed. According to Segnis, the European Communities made it possible for every citizen of the then six member states to “feel at home in every other country”. From July 1958 to February 1959 he was Minister of Defense in the government of Amintore Fanfani . In February 1959 he was again entrusted with the formation of a government, this time he headed a short-lived minority cabinet to which only DC ministers belonged, but which was tolerated in parliament by the PLI, the monarchists (PNM, PMP ) and the neo-fascists ( MSI ). At the same time he held the office of Minister of the Interior. During this term of office, Italy held the presidency of the Council of the European Union for the first time . From March 1960 he belonged to another government under Fanfani as foreign minister.

Presidency

In 1962, in the ninth ballot, he was elected President with 51.8% of the vote. His main contestant was Giuseppe Saragat (PSDI; who succeeded him two years later), who was supported by PCI, PSI, PSDI and PRI; The left wing of the DC around Fanfani was also rather averse to the election of Segni, but was then brought into line by party chairman Aldo Moro . Ultimately, Segni served the monarchists and the neo-fascist MSI as decisive majority procurers. He took office on May 11, 1962. Segni belonged to the right wing of the Democrazia Cristiana and was opposed to Aldo Moro's center-left coalition with the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI). Instead, he considered setting up an "apolitical" cabinet of civil servants and strengthening the rights of the president in the Italian constitution, following the example of the French Fifth Republic under de Gaulle . However, he was aware that this would have met with great opposition and therefore refrained from pursuing such plans.

During the protracted and drawn-out coalition negotiations between DC and PSI in July 1964, he consulted with Senate President Cesare Merzagora , who was an avowed supporter of an emergency government, with General Aldo Rossi, the Army Chief of Staff, and also called the General of the Carabinieri , Giovanni De Lorenzo , to himself in the Quirinal Palace . The latter then worked out a coup plan (piano solo) , according to which the Carabinieri should occupy government buildings and other important posts in the event of uprisings and intern unreliable (ie mainly left-wing) people. Whether Segni de Lorenzo instructed De Lorenzo to draw up this plan, to what extent he was privy to the plans and whether he wanted to spread rumors of coup d'état not only to influence the formation of a government cannot be clarified with any certainty. In any case, the socialists then quickly gave in and rejoined the government, renouncing most of their demands.

Only a short time after the crisis in July 1964, Segni suffered a stroke, was then partially paralyzed and could no longer carry out his official duties. Segni had already been sick and weakened repeatedly before, but had always kept working, which earned him the nickname malato di ferro - "the iron sick man". As a result, for the first time in Italian constitutional history, the problem arose as to who had to establish that the President was permanently prevented from doing so so that new presidential elections could be scheduled by the President of the Chamber of Deputies. Neither the Constituent Assembly nor the Parliament had enacted implementing provisions for this. According to the prevailing opinion of Italian constitutional lawyers, however, the parliament should have established the prevention. The problem was resolved on December 6, 1964, when Segnis resigned.

As President Antonio Segni made official trips abroad to Greece , Morocco , Germany , the United States and France . There were several official and private visits to the Vatican.

The politician Mariotto Segni is his son.

Honors

Web links

Commons : Antonio Segni  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Paul Ginsborg: A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics, 1943-1988. Palgrave Macmillan, New York / Basingstoke (Hampshire) 2003, p. 122.
  2. ^ A b c Mark F. Gilbert, K. Robert Nilsson: The A to Z of Modern Italy. Scarecrow Press, Lanham / Toronto / Plymouth 2010, keyword Segni, Antonio , pp. 398–399.
  3. ^ Ginsborg: A History of Contemporary Italy. 2003, p. 110.
  4. ^ Ginsborg: A History of Contemporary Italy. 2003, pp. 129-137.
  5. ^ Federico Scarano: Antonio Segni, Konrad Adenauer e l'integrazione europea. In: L'Italia nella costruzione europea. Un bilancio storico (1957-2007). Franco Angeli, Milan 2009, pp. 369-393, on p. 369.
  6. ↑ a b c Daniele Marchi: Semestri di storia. Segni e la 1 ° Presidenza italiana. In: Rivista di affari europei , July 22, 2014.
  7. ^ Ginsborg: A History of Contemporary Italy. 2003, p. 138.
  8. ^ Geoffrey Pridham: Political Parties and Coalitional Behavior in Italy. Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) / New York 1988, p. 52.
  9. ^ Carol Mershon: The Costs of Coalition. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 2002, p. 47.
  10. ^ Ginsborg: A History of Contemporary Italy. 2003, p. 268.
  11. ↑ James L. Newell: The Politics of Italy. Governance in a normal country. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, pp. Xxi.
  12. ↑ Reinhard Kühnl, Gerd Wiegel, Steffen Klittich, Jens Renner: The extreme right in Europe. For recent developments in Germany, Austria, France and Italy. Distel-Verlag, Heilbronn 1998, p. 148.
  13. ^ Paul Ginsborg: A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics, 1943-1988. Palgrave Macmillan, New York / Basingstoke (Hampshire) 2003, pp. 277-278.
  14. ↑ Tobias Hof: State and Terrorism in Italy 1969–1982. Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, pp. 29-30.
  15. ^ Ginsborg: A History of Contemporary Italy. 2003, pp. 276-277.
  16. ^ Spencer M. Di Scala: Renewing Italian Socialism. Nenni to Craxi. Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 1988, p. 154.
  17. ^ Italy: Malato di Ferro. In: Time Magazine , October 2, 1964.
  18. ↑ List of trips on archivio.quirinale.it
personal data
SURNAME Segni, Antonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian politician, member of the Camera dei deputati
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Sassari
DATE OF DEATH 1st December 1972
Place of death Rome