Ernesto Sestan

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Ernesto Sestan (born November 2, 1898 in Trento , † January 19, 1986 in Florence ) was an Italian historian who dealt with history from late antiquity to the 20th century. He was a connoisseur of both German and Italian history and historiography .

Origin, soldier in the First World War

The Sestans family, his parents were Corrado Sestan and Carolina Calioni, came from Istria , namely from Albona, today's Labin . Corrado was a simple land registry clerk for the cadastral community of Albona, Carolina came from a wealthy, middle-class family. In January 1898 Corrado Sestan was transferred to Trento, where the family moved. In the following years she continued to maintain intensive contacts in her home country. Their son Ernesto Sestan was born in Trento. There he spent the first decade and a half of his life.

After the Italian entry into World War I in May 1915, his family was forced to move to Innsbruck , and his mother died in July 1916. In 1917, Sestan was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army as a non-commissioned officer and then fought on the Romanian front in Transylvania . The memories he wrote from this period are important, but above all his 150 letters to his father, which he wrote between February 1917 and September 1918. In 1918 Sestan was allowed to take the Matura in Vienna .

Studies, career in fascism, dealing with German topics

After the war, Sestan studied in Florence , where he heard from Alberto Del Vecchio about law and medieval institutional history, and from Luigi Schiaparelli about palaeography and diplomacy . Above all, however, Gaetano Salvemini became his teacher, whose moral integrity fascinated him more, as he later recalled, than his qualities as a historian. Sestan's good knowledge of German prompted his teacher to encourage him to deal with German topics. He received his doctorate in 1923 with the work Le origini del podestà forestiero nei comuni toscani . The next year the publication took place under a modified title.

In Florence, Sestan attended the Circolo di cultura of the brothers Carlo and Nello Rosselli and Ernesto Rossi. There friendships developed, such as with Federico Chabod . From 1924 to 1925 he witnessed the arrest and trial of Salvemini for the paper Non mollare! . While his teacher was in prison, Sestan helped him proofread his La politica estera dell'Italia dal 1871 al 1915 , which he kept until it was published in 1944. Salvemini used his release to flee abroad because he feared for his life; not until 1947 saw in Sestan again.

Sestan taught at the Istituto Magistrale in Pisa from 1925 to 1926 , then in Florence until 1929. At the request of the Provveditorato Regional (regional authority) he wrote a brief Storia della scuola primaria in Toscana . At the same time he worked with reviews and miscommunication on German-language mediaeval works in the Archivio storico italiano. From 1926 to 1929 Leonardo , a magazine headed by Luigi Russo, offered him greater freedom . There, too, he reviewed numerous works, but almost exclusively on recent and recent history, including the studies of Francesco Ercole and Chabod on Niccolò Machiavelli . This earned him the respect of Benedetto Croce . In this way he penetrated into questions and methods that seemed less narrow to him than the contemporary work on the Middle Ages.

Sestan worked from 1929, together with Chabod, as editor of the Enciclopedia Italiana , both for the section Medieval and Modern. There he met Gioacchino Volpe . In 1930 he moved to Naples, but without ceasing to work. For example, he wrote the article Germania (dalla Riforma a Napoleone) , i.e. about Germany from the Reformation to Napoleon , or about Europe ( Giorgio Falco took over the Middle Ages here ). From 1931 he worked for five years as secretary of the Royal Academy of Italy ; this was achieved through friendships with Chabod and especially with Volpe, the general secretary, through which he became the head of the Ministero dell'Educazione nazionale , the national education ministry. Again with the support of Volpe and Arturo Marpicati, the academy's chancellor, he was given a post . Again it was Volpe who defended him against the attacks by Agostino Nasti in the Critica Fascista that with Sestan a student of Salvemini had taken the post.

Sestan published an essay about Max Weber that appeared in 1933/34. In the second half of the 1930s he published historical portraits of the Brandenburg electors and Prussian kings as well as Prince Eugene .

Sestan was forced to join the Fascist Party in order to secure his professional position, a step, as he later admitted, ha inciso in me molto nel profondo e mi ha lasciato e mi lascerà dell'amaro finché vivrò . From 1936 to 1939 Sestan, dissatisfied with the bureaucratic work, was a school councilor in Siena and then became editor of the Rivista Storica Italiana , headed by Gioacchino Volpe . There, friendly ties arose with Walter Maturi, the neighboring Istituto Storico Italiano per l'età moderna e contemporanea , and Carlo Morandi . Volpe was formally director of the Rivista, but Sestan actually filled this position. In 1941 Sestan published the fortnightly Popoli on the initiative of Chabod and Morandi in particular about the kings of Prussia. At Morandi's encouragement, he also wrote in Primato , the magazine published by Giuseppe Bottai, Risorgimento italiano e unità tedesca . In it he defended himself against the parallelization of the founding of the German Empire and Italy. Sestan, on the other hand, emphasized the founding of Italy out of the spirit of freedom and independence, while that of Germany out of the spirit of nationalism, the implementation of which was in the hands of the military power of Prussia

Post-war period, marriage, chair in Florence

The post-war period, when Rome was liberated in June 1944, brought a reconnection to its origins. A Comitato Giuliano was set up in Rome with the aim of informing the public and the government that Yugoslavia was threatened with a complete annexation of Venezia Giulia . As a kind of secretary, Sestan sent the Foreign Minister Alcide De Gasperi a corresponding memorandum. This dossier formed the basis for Venezia Giulia. Lineamenti di storia etnica e culturale , published in Rome in 1947. On the occasion of the new edition in 1965, Cinzio Violante emphasized that it was a model for a well thought-out and effective synthesis of the history of an Italian region. In 1946 the volume La Costituente di Francoforte (1848-1849) appeared in the series Studi storici per la Costituente . In the referendum on the abolition of the monarchy on June 2, 1946, Sestan voted for its preservation as a symbol of the continuity of the nation of liberal-democratic, pre-fascist Italy.

In June 1948 Sestan married Margherita Mercatelli, his former student at the Istituto Magistrale in Florence. In the same 1948 he was appointed to the University of Cagliari and took over the chair of Medieval and Modern History. He also taught as a professor from 1952 to 1954 in Pisa at the Scuola normal superiore (philosophy of history, later methodology), moved to the university in November 1951 and finally taught from 1954 to 1969 in Florence, where he succeeded Nicola Ottokar at the Chair for Medieval Studies. The Accademia dei Lincei he belonged since 1957 as corresponding member, in 1975 he became a full member.

Sestan's research focus was the history of historiography , but methodological questions also preoccupied him. Through his work on the history of Italian cities, he achieved international renown as a historian. Another focus was "Nation" and "Nationality". One of his main works is the depiction of State and Nation in the High Middle Ages , published in 1952 . The origin of the nation in Germany, France and Italy , a subject that has always interested him, as he later wrote. The tasks at the chair prompted him to increasingly turn to the Middle Ages. So works like La città comunale italiana dei secoli XI-XIII nelle sue note caratteristiche rispetto al movimento comunale europeo or Le origini delle signorie cittadine: un problema storico esaurito? (1961), the Scritti storici e geografici (Florence 1957). He also dealt with the Habsburg Empire or with La Firenze di Vieusseux e di Capponi , which appeared in 1986, a work on Tuscany in the 19th century with a political and cultural focus. In 1959, his work in the Middle Ages paved the way for him to join the committee of the Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo , probably the most renowned institute for the history of the early Middle Ages in Italy. In 1967, Sestan moved to the Chair of Modern History in-house. In 1969 he became president of the Deputazione di storia patria per la Toscana and director of the Archivio Storico Italiano. In 1973 pupils wrote a bibliography of his work, and in 1980 the two-volume text Studi di storia medievale e moderna per Ernesto Sestan was published . In 1985 Sestan withdrew from all obligations for health reasons.

The heirs of Sestan left his private archive to the Pisan Centro archivistico della scuola normal superiore .

Fonts (selection)

See the complete list of writings in Bibliografia degli scritti di Ernesto Sestan. In: Ernesto Sestan, Scritti vari. Vol. 1, Florence 1988, pp. 1-49.

  • Stato e nazione nell'Alto Medioevo. Ricerche sulle origini nazionali in Francia, Italia, Germania (= Biblioteca Storica. NS Bd. 3, ZDB -ID 1338690-6 ). Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, Naples 1952.
  • Scritti vari . 5 volumes, Le Lettere, Florence 1988–2011 (= collected small writings)
    • Vol. 1: Alto Medioevo . 1988.
    • Vol. 2: Italia comunale e signorile . 1989.
    • Vol. 3: Storiografia dell'Otto e Novecento . 1991.
    • Vol. 4: L'età contemporanea . 1999.
    • Vol. 5; Storia moderna . 2011.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Lettere dal fronte, 1917–1918 , Trient 1997.
  2. ↑ Ernesto Sestan: Ricerche intorno ai primi podestà toscani , in: Archivio Storico Italiano Ser. 7, Vol. 2 / (82) (1924) 177-254.
  3. ↑ Gaetano Salvemini: La politica estera dell'Italia, dal 1871 al 1914 , G. Barbèra, 1944.
  4. ^ Ernesto Sestan: Storia della scuola primaria in Toscana , in: La scuola in Toscana. Bollettino del R. provveditorato agli studi di Firenze , I (1924) 124-137, here: pp. 180-186.
  5. ^ Ernesto Sestan: Max Weber. In: Nuovi studi di diritto, economia e politica. Vol. 6 (1933) and 7 (1934), reprinted in Ernesto Sestan: Scritti vari III. Storiografia dell'Otto e Novecento. Edited by Giuliano Pinto. Le Lettere, Florenz 1991, pp. 243-280, ISBN 88-7166-040-4 .
  6. ^ Christiane Liermann: Ernesto Sestan (1898-1986). In: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 87 (2005) 149–164, here: p. 158.
  7. ↑ Ernesto Sestan: Memorie di un uomo senza qualità. Florence 1997, p. 231.
  8. ↑ Annuario 1993, p. 384.
  9. ↑ This is how works such as L'erudizione storica in Italia (1950), La storiografia contemporanea fra tradizione e innovazione (1964), Storia degli avvenimenti e storia delle strutture (1973) or La storiografia come scienza storica (1977) emerged.
  10. ^ Ernesto Sestan: Stato e nazione nell'Alto Medioevo. Ricerche sulle origini nazionali in Francia, Italia, Germania. Naples 1994.
  11. ^ Sestan Ernesto , website of the Centro Archivistico della Scuola Normale Superiore.
personal data
SURNAME Sestan, Ernesto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Trent
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1986
Place of death Florence