Carlo Cattaneo

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Carlo Cattaneos statue by Ettore Ferrari in Milan (Via Santa Margherita).

Carlo Cattaneo (born June 15, 1801 in Milan , † February 5, 1869 in Castagnola-Cassarate (Lugano) ) was an Italian patriot, federalist republican, writer and philosopher of the Risorgimento .

As one of Milan's leading intellectuals, he was involved in the events of the five-day uprising ( le cinque giornate of March 1848) in the revolutionary year of 1848 , which was directed against the Austrian rule in Lombardy. In contrast to most of the other Italian and Milanese revolutionaries (such as Milan's Podestà Count Gabrio Casati ), for whom the unification of Italy was in the foreground and who therefore pleaded for a military intervention by King Karl Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia , the anti-Piemonesian Cattaneo wanted primarily to realize political freedom in Lombardy. As a result, he was increasingly pushed to the edge of the action.

After the recapture of the city by the Austrian troops of Field Marshal Josef Radetzky in August 1848, Cattaneo was forced into exile in Ticino in Lugano, where he continued to be active politically (sometimes economically) and as a writer until the end of his life. Although Cattaneo remained informed about the events in Italy, he was no longer politically active in his country of birth, especially since he did not want to give the appearance of recognizing the monarchist rule of the Savoy over the Kingdom of Italy , which was successfully unified in 1861 .

Life

Youth, education and writing (1801–1847)

The son of the goldsmith Melchiorre and Maria Antonia Sangiorgi, Carlo Cattaneo was born on June 15, 1801, the second of six children in Milan. In his childhood he often spent longer stays with his father's relatives in Casorate Primo, about 21 km southwest of Milan . Already during these visits his early interest in literature showed and developed, especially since there he could fall back on the library of his great-uncle, a rural priest.

Because of this interest, the young Cattaneo then attended seminars in Lecco , Arlenico, Monza and Milan , which - according to the wishes of his parents, which also arose from the family's economic situation - were ultimately to train him to be a priest. However, after receiving instruction in logic, literature and metaphysics there, the seventeen-year-old decided to break off his career as a priest. Logically, he moved to the Sant 'Alessandro Gymnasium in Milan to continue his education, where he passed the final exams in "Religion, Universal History, Mathematics, Theoretical Experimental Physics and Theoretical and Practical Philosophy" in 1818 and 1819. About a year later he finished high school in Nuova Porta high school, where he studied technology, natural history and Latin literature. Characteristic of this time were visits to the public libraries in the area such as the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan or the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense as well as the private library of his uncle Antonio Cattaneo, which enabled him to deal extensively with literature. At the same time, teachers like Giambattista De Cristoforis or Giovanni Gherardini broaden his horizons by arousing his interest in history and other sciences. He also benefited from contact with his cousin Gaetano Cattaneo, who was the director of the Münzkabinett.

In December 1820, Cattaneo received a position as a teacher of Latin grammar and later also for humanities at the local Latin school Santa Marta, which he would hold for the following fifteen years. It was around this time that his first acquaintances with the Milanese intellectuals, particularly the writer Vincenzo Monti and the Ticino politician Stefano Franscini, should be mentioned. At the same time, Cattaneo began to attend the private law school of Gian Domenico Romagnosi , with whom he would soon become a close friend. "After the Romagnosi School closed, he continued his university preparation in self-study and received his doctorate in law on August 19, 1824." In 1822, Cattaneo published his first work, a review of Romagnosi's book Assunto primo , published in 1820 della scienza del diritto naturale , in the journal Antologia of the Florentine intellectual Giovan Pietro Vieusseux . Together with Stefano Franscini, he worked on the Italian translation of Heinrich Zschokke's Des Schweizerlands Geschichte for the Swiss people , which, however, did not appear until 1829. In 1825 Cattaneo's father and older brother had died. In the same year he met the English noblewoman Anna Payne Woodcock, whom he married twelve years later. Also in 1835 Cattaneo finished his professional activity at the Latin school. Instead, he now devoted himself to publishing his own magazine. From the late 1820s onwards, Cattaneo had switched to publishing articles and essays more often in specialist journals. On January 1, 1839, Cattaneo, who had previously written regularly for the “Annali universali di statistica”, published the first edition of his own, newly founded and extremely versatile journal Il Politecnico , the articles on mathematics, medicine, technology, natural history , but also included literature, art and history. In the meantime, Cattaneo had become an advocate of technical modernization: He was involved in the construction of railways, especially for a route from Milan to Venice, like his book Ricerche sul progetto di una strada di ferro da Milano a Venezia (German: research on the project a rail connection from Milan to Venice).

Commemorative plaque for Cattaneo on his house (1840–48) in Milan

After Cattaneo had submitted drafts of prison reform for the Lombardy-Venetian government and participated in the international discourse on the penal system, he was offered numerous honorary positions: in 1843, for example, he became a member of the prestigious Istituto Lombardo di Scienze Lettere ed Arti (Eng .: Lombardisches Institute for Literature and Art Studies), a year later the Congress of Scientists. Other, similar voluntary activities followed. In short, when the revolutionary movement spread in Lombardy in March 1848, based on the January uprising in Naples and Sicily and the February Revolution in Paris , Cattaneo was a highly respected man in intellectual circles, but he was not yet particularly noticeable through political activity. His writing Sull'ulteriore sviluppo del pubblico insegnamento in Lombardia (German: On the further development of the public school service in Lombardy) from 1848, as it was more oriented towards democratic principles, had brought him initial difficulties with the Austrian police, which Cattaneo attracted some attention, but had not held any political office before 1848.

The time of the Milan Revolution (1848)

This changed with the cinque giornate di Milano , when, after initial hesitation, on March 19 he even became a member of a four-person council of war. The initial resistance to a rebellion on the part of Cattaneo resulted, however, as the Republican himself later wrote, only from the fact that “he suspected the moderates of wanting to provoke a premature uprising which was likely to make Charles Albert of Piedmont intervene against them To provoke Austrians ”. Soon differences also emerged between Cattaneo's democratic-federalist stance and the more moderate revolutionaries (the so-called moderati ) - while the latter, to whom the mayor, Count Gabriel Casati, who was caught in a loyalty conflict (he was a patriot, but in his role as Podestà worked closely with the Austrians), advocated military intervention by the House of Savoy, the democratici under Cattaneo such as Carlo Osio or Enrico Cernuschi vehemently rejected this idea. Nevertheless, Cattaneo successfully advised against proclaiming a democratic republic of Milan. Instead, he approved the formation of the Provisional Liberal Government under Casati on March 22nd by putting his signature on a letter referring to the political discussions within the revolutionary movement with the words "a causa vinta" ("after the victory") Tried to postpone time after the fighting. Presumably Cattaneo had recognized that the monarchists were in the majority and wanted to prevent a civil war, so that he was also prepared to make major compromises.

The time in exile in Ticino (1848–1869)

Memorie di economia pubblica dal 1833 al 1860 , 1860

Despite the military intervention of Sardinia-Piedmont, the Austrian field marshal Josef Radetzky managed to bring the city under his control in August. As a result, Cattaneo fled to Paris via Lugano on August 8th.

A few months later he returned to Lugano, where he was to be active as a writer and politician until the end of his life. There he wrote about two books about the Italian Revolution, which were to become the basic sources of the Risorgimento : The memoir-like representation Dell'insurrezione di Milano nel 1848 e della successiva guerra (English: About the uprising of Milan and the subsequent war) on the one hand, and the annotated collection of documents Archivio triennale delle cose d'Italia dall'avvenimento di Pio IX all'abbandono di Venezia (German: Triennial archive on the situation in Italy from the events of Pius IX to the surrender of Venice). Basically, Cattaneo only returned to Italy to pursue a scientific career. When he was elected to the Camera dei Deputati as a member of the Camera dei Deputati for the constituency of Milan in 1860 and 1867 , he did not take the oath on the constitution and did not attend the meetings at all. Cattaneo did not want to violate his republican ideals by making an oath of allegiance or political activity in Italy appear to accept the existing political order. That is why he quickly withdrew after briefly participating in Giuseppe Garibaldi's entry into Naples (see Train of the Thousand ), because he realized that an unification of Italy under democratic and federal principles was no longer possible. In his exile in Lugano, Cattaneo was a philosophy teacher at the newly founded cantonal grammar school from 1852, for which he designed a text with suggestions for a teaching reform that same year. In 1865 he quit the job at the school because he had fallen out with the Gotthard Committee over the question of access routes. In the same year in which he gave up his teaching activity, Cattaneo, who had been granted honorary citizenship of Ticino in 1858, began to publish the Politecnico again . In addition, he had dealt with architectural and economic issues such as developing the Magadino plain and had become an advocate of the Gotthard plan on the Alpine railway issue. On the night of February 5 to 6, 1869, Cattaneo died at the age of 68 in his home in Castagnola.

Fonts

Scritti filosofici

Work editions:

  • Comitato italo-svizzero per la pubblicazione delle opere di Carlo Cattaneo (ed.): Edizione nazionale delle opere di Carlo Cattaneo. Florence 1948-2010. (further volumes planned)
  • Luigi Ambrosoli (Ed.): Tutte le opere di Carlo Cattaneo. (remained unfinished)
    • Vol. 4: Scritti dal 1848 al 1852. Milan 1967.
    • Vol. 5: Archivio triennale delle cose d'Italia: dall'avvenimento di Pio IX. all'abbandono di Venezia. Milan 1974, 2 parts, 3 vols.

Selection of individual fonts:

  • La Psicologia delle menti associate. 1866.
  • La città considerata come principio ideal delle istorie italiane. (German: the city as the ideal principle of Italian history).
  • Dell'India antica e moderna. (German: About ancient and modern India).
  • Notice naturali e civili su la Lombardia. (German: Notes on civilization and nature in Lombardy).
  • Vita di Dante di Cesare Balbo. (German: The life of Dante by Cesare Balbo ).
  • Il Politecnico, Repertorio mensile di studi applicati alla prosperità e coltura sociale. (German: monthly collection of studies on social prosperity and education), founded in 1839.
  • Sull'ulteriore sviluppo del pubblico insegnamento in Lombardia. (German: On the further development of the public school service in Lombardy), 1848.
  • Dell'Insurrezione di Milano in 1848 e della successiva guerra. (German: About the uprising of Milan and the war that followed).
  • Archivio triennale delle cose d'Italia dall'avvenimento di Pio IX all'abbandono di Venezia (German: Triennial archive on the situation in Italy from the events of Pius IX to the surrender of Venice).

literature

  • Giuseppe Armani: Carlo Cattaneo una biografia. Il padre del Federalismo italiano . Garzanti, Milan 1997. ISBN 881173861X
  • Ettore Bonora : Cattaneo scrittore . In: Manzoni e la via italiana al realismo . Liguori, Naples 1989.
  • Norberto Bobbio : Una filosofia militante. Studi su Carlo Cattaneo . Einaudi, Turin 1971.
  • Anne Bruch: Municipal identity and bourgeois culture in the Risorgimento. The importance of the city for Carlo Cattaneo's federal-democratic conception. In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 22 (2010), pp. 165–179.
  • Michele Campopiano, Cattaneo e la città considerata come principio ideal delle istorie italiane. In: M. Cambogiano, L. Gori, G. Martinico, E. Stradella (eds.): Dialoghi con il Presidente. Allievi ed ex-allievi delle Scuole d'eccellenza pisane a colloquio con Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Pisa, Edizioni della Normale, 2008, pp. 29-42
  • Antonio Carrannante: Carlo Cattaneo e Carlo Tenca di fronte alle teorie linguistiche del Manzoni . In: Giornale storico della letteratura italiana . 1977, pp. 213-237.
  • Arturo Colombo, Carlo Montaleone: Carlo Cattaneo e il Politecnico. Franco Angeli Edizioni, Milan 1993
  • Fabrizio Frigerio: Carlo Cattaneo , in: Dictionnaire international du Fédéralisme. Bruylant, Brussels 1994.
  • Mario Fubini : Gli scritti letterari di Carlo Cattaneo , in Romanticismo italiano. Laterza, Bari 1953.
  • Hans Gangl: Carlo Cattaneo. A federalist vision against monarchical centralization. In: Bernd-Christian Funk, Ludwig Adamovich (Ed.): The rule of law before new challenges. Festschrift for Ludwig Adamovich on his 70th birthday. Verlag Österreich, Vienna 2002, pp. 127–144.
  • Antonio Gili (ed.): Pagine storiche luganesi. Anno 1, number 1, November 1984, Arti grafiche già Veladini & Co SA, Lugano 1984.
  • Giulio Guderzo: Carlo Cattaneo federalista europeo. In: Il Cantonetto. Anno LVII-LVIII, N2-3-4, Lugano 2011, Fontana Edizioni SA, Pregassona 2011, pp. 31-35.
  • Carlo Lacaita (Ed.): L'opera e l'eredità di Carlo Cattaneo. Feltrinelli, Milan 1974.
  • Clara Maria Lovett: Carlo Cattaneo and the Politics of the Risorgimento, 1820-1860. Springer Netherlands, 1973.
  • Jessie White Mario: Carlo Cattaneo. Cenni. Cremona 1877.
  • Carlo Moos: Carlo Cattaneo. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . February 1, 2005 , accessed January 15, 2020 .
  • The same: Carlo Cattaneo in Ticino dal 1848 al 1869. In: Bollettino della Società Storica Locarnese. 14, Tipografia Pedrazzini, Locarno 2011, pp. 95-110; the same: the 'other' Risorgimento. The Milanese democrat Carlo Cattaneo in exile in Switzerland 1848-1869. (= Zurich Italian Studies , Volume 4), Berlin a. a. 2020.
  • Umberto Puccio: Introduzione a Cattaneo . Einaudi, Turin 1977.
  • Ernesto Sestan :  Cattaneo, Carlo. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 22:  Castelvetro – Cavallotti. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1979.
  • Adriano Soldini (ed.): Carlo Cattaneo nel primo centenario della morte, antologia di scritti. Edizioni Casagrande, Bellinzona 1970.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Arch. Rebecca Fant Milano (accessed April 23, 2016).
  2. ↑ Cf. Mike Rapport: 1848: Revolution in Europa , Theiss 2011, p. 169 f.
  3. ↑ a b Cf. Carlo Moos: Carlo Cattaneo - A great unknown. For the 200th birthday of the Lombard federalist. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , June 15, 2001 (accessed April 24, 2016).
  4. ↑ a b c d e Cf. Pier Carlo della Ferrera, Franco Masoni and Sergio Romano: Carlo Cattaneo “A universal spirit” , p. 3 ( PDF , accessed on February 9, 2020).
  5. ↑ See Pier Carlo della Ferrera, Franco Masoni and Sergio Romano: Carlo Cattaneo “A universal spirit” , p. 4 ( PDF , accessed on February 9, 2020).
  6. ↑ Cf. Mike Rapport: 1848: Revolution in Europa , Theiss 2011, p. 94 f .: "The republican teacher and intellectual Carlo Cattaneo interjected that there could be no uprising against such a superiority [...]".
  7. ↑ Mike Rapport: 1848: Revolution in Europa , Theiss 2011, p. 95.
  8. ↑ Cf. Mike Rapport: 1848: Revolution in Europa , Theiss 2011, p. 95.
  9. ^ Carlo Moos: Carlo Cattaneo. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . February 1, 2005 , accessed April 24, 2016 .
  10. ↑ See Pier Carlo della Ferrera, Franco Masoni and Sergio Romano: Carlo Cattaneo “A universal spirit” , p. 5 ( PDF , accessed on February 9, 2020).
personal data
SURNAME Cattaneo, Carlo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian patriot and politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1869
Place of death Castagnola-Cassarate (Lugano)