Clara Petacci

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Clara Petacci (called Claretta ) (born February 28, 1912 in Rome , † April 28, 1945 in Mezzegra ) was a lover of the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini .

Life

Petacci came from an upper-class family, her father Francesco Saverio Petacci (1883–1970) was a doctor in Vatican City . Her mother was Giuseppina Persichetti (1888–1962). Clara studied music and learned from the violinist Corrado Archibugi . In 1934 she married Air Force Lieutenant Riccardo Federici (1904–1972), from whom she separated in 1936. Divorce was not possible in Italy at the time.

Petacci had already met Mussolini in April 1932. Her family encouraged the developing relationship and benefited from it. In 1939 the family was able to move from Via Lazzaro Spallanzani to the “Camilluccia” villa, a huge building built in the style of Italian rationalism , which was created under the direction and design of the architects Vincenzo Monaco and Amedeo Luccichenti. After the war, the villa was confiscated on the charge that Mussolini had acquired it from diverted state funds. Partly restituted, the decaying building was later demolished and replaced by a complex that now houses the Iraqi embassy.

Mussolini had married Rachele Guidi in 1915 , with whom he had five children. In addition, he had several affairs and had nine other children with eight other women.

Petacci also gave in her diaries the anti-Semitism of Mussolini, who wrote to her "I was a racist since 1921". As an ardent fascist and meticulous chronicler, she wanted to record every utterance and every step Mussolini made for posterity in her diary. On July 25, 1943, she was arrested when Mussolini was overthrown , but was released on September 8. Faced with the advancing Allied forces, the family moved to northern Italy, where the German National Socialists had taken power. Petacci lived in Gardone, not far from the government quarters of the now proclaimed so-called Social Republic of Italy . During this time, Petacci and Mussolini often corresponded by letter, although she kept the letters against his request. In one of these letters she asked Mussolini to spare Galeazzo Ciano , Mussolini's son-in-law and arrested foreign minister, as Chessa and Raggi claim. In other letters, she urged him to be more self-confident vis-à-vis the German protective power and tried to reawaken his political ambition.

In April 1945 Petacci fled to Milan , her family managed to escape to Barcelona . In the spring of 1945 she tried to get to Switzerland with Mussolini via the Valtellina . However, Mussolini was recognized by communist partisans in Dongo on Lake Como on April 27, 1945 and captured with his companions. After the capture, according to legend, Clara Petacci was given the opportunity to escape, but she refused and was shot with Mussolini and most of his companions. She may have been raped before she died. The exact circumstances of her shooting and that of Mussolini are still controversial. Their bodies were desecrated by an angry crowd and the next day hung upside down in Piazzale Loreto in Milan and displayed for photos, in the same place where the fascists shot fifteen civilians on August 10, 1944 and exhibited their bodies.

Grave on the Cimitero del Verano

In 1984 her life was filmed under the title Claretta with Claudia Cardinale . Your last days at Mussolini's side are also the subject of the film Mussolini - The Last Days from 1974.

In November 2009, after a long dispute between the Italian state and their heirs , the Rizzoli Verlag in Milan published her diary entries from 1932 to 1938. In 2011, the sequel from 1939 to 1940 was published. Petacci had entrusted her diaries to Countess Rina Cervis, in whose garden they were dug up by police in 1950. Since then they have been kept in the State Archives, only to be released after 70 years.

swell

literature

  • RJB Bosworth : Claretta: Mussolini's Last Lover. Yale University Press, 2016
Fiction
  • Franz Spunda : Clara Petacci. A novel about Mussolini's lover. Zimmer & Herzog, Berchtesgaden 1952
  • Hans Herlin : The Beloved. Clara Petacci's tragic love for Benito Mussolini. Moewig, Rastatt 1980, ISBN 3-8118-2105-9 .
  • Antje Windgassen: In league with power. The wives of the dictators. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-593-36900-1 .

Web links

Commons : Clara Petacci  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tony Barber: A match for Mussolini. Review. In: Financial Times . February 18, 2017, p. 9.
  2. Alexander Smoltczyk: Mussolini and his beloved. In bed with "Ben". In: Spiegel online, November 25, 2009.
  3. ^ A b Katja Iken: Mussolini friend Clara Petacci: Faithful to death. www.spiegel.de, April 27, 2015
  4. ^ Pasquale Chessa: L 'ultima lettera di Benito. Mussolini e Petacci: amore e politica a Salò, 1943–45. Mondadori, 2010, no p.
  5. ^ Pasquale Chessa, Barbara Raggi: L'ultima lettera di Benito. Mussolini e Petacci: Amore e politica a Salò 1943-1945. Mondadori, Milan 2012, no p.
  6. a b The death of the Duce . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1996 ( online ).
  7. ^ Hendrik Werner: Diaries of the beloved. Review. In: The world . November 19, 2009. Retrieved November 27, 2009.
  8. ^ Hans Woller: The diaries of Claretta Petacci (1932-1940). At sehepunkte . Retrieved October 24, 2011.