Federico Confalonieri

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Federico Confalonieri

Federico Confalonieri (born October 6, 1785 in Milan , † December 10, 1846 in Hospental ) was an Italian politician , patriot and Freemason .

Life

The Confalonieri family was not ennobled until the end of the 17th century, but was already very well respected in Milan in the 18th century. The noble family owned extensive estates. Federico Confalonieri married Teresa Casati in 1806 . The couple had one child who soon died.

Although the young Federico Confalonieri made no secret of his aversion to Napoleon , he was a senator in the Napoleonic kingdom of Italy under the Viceroy of Italy Eugène de Beauharnais . In April 1814, with the collapse of this kingdom by Napoleon's grace, Confalonieri was able to become politically active for the first time. He called for Northern Italy - independent of the French and Austrians . It turned out differently. The Lombardy became a province of the Emperor of Austria . In addition, Confalonieri's career as a politician was overshadowed by suspicions. It was said that he instigated the murder of the Milanese finance minister, Prina. After he had defended himself in writing against the accusation and thereby demonstrated his political independence, he was temporarily banished to his estates by Emperor Franz around 1815. The Austrians were suspicious of a former senator under Napoleon.

Together with Count Luigi Porro Lambertenghi from Milan, Confalonieri pushed for the introduction of technical achievements - for example the steam engine and gas lighting - based on the English model in northern Italy. With Lambertenghi, Confalonieri also published the magazine Il Conciliatore on September 3, 1818 . The political paper was banned by the Austrian censors a year later. Confalonieri had seen the education system there in 1814 while traveling through England, France and Switzerland and was active in this sector in Lombardy.

The Lombard nobility was largely fond of the Austrians. Confalonieri - an opponent of foreigners - saw in the liberal-thinking Piedmontese Karl Albert a potential Italian opponent of the Austrians. In the autumn of the same year, the Austrians reacted to the revolutionary events in Naples in 1820 with the arrest of two political comrades-in-arms: Piero Maroncelli and Silvio Pellico were indicted. Count Lambertenghi fled in April 1821. Confalonieri stayed and was arrested on December 13, 1821 on the basis of incriminating statements made by Giorgio Pallavicino, who had already been arrested on December 4 . The trial in Milan lasted until November 1823. Federico Confalonieri was sentenced to death as a traitor.

Teresa was not admitted to the emperor with her request to have the death sentence lifted. Nevertheless, the ruler let mercy go ahead; probably on the advice of his wife, the empress . Attempts to escape from the Spielberg fortress in Brno , prepared and encouraged by friends, relatives and good-natured Austrians, were never carried out because Confalonieri absolutely refused to flee. In 1835, with the death of the emperor, freedom came after twelve years of imprisonment. The count left Spielberg a sick, broken man.

With the loss of civil rights, Confalonieri was forcibly deported to America . On November 29, 1836, he boarded a ship in Trieste and landed in New York three months later . In America, Confalonieri was celebrated as a freedom hero. When he returned to Europe in 1837, he was not allowed to stay in France or Switzerland out of consideration for the respective government in Austria . In Vichy, Confalonieri and Pallavicino lived in the same hotel, but there was no reconciliation between the two. As Pius IX. In 1846 the Italian patriots finally amnestied, the seriously ill Confalonieri hurried home from Paris and died on the way in Hospental on the Gotthard .

The Count is buried in the Casati mausoleum in Lombard soil next to Teresa .

literature

Web links

Commons : Federico Confalonieri  - collection of images, videos and audio files

See also

  • Ricarda Huch: The life of Count Federico Confalonieri. Novel. Island. Leipzig 1979 (first edition 1910). 440 pages

Remarks

  1. The outlaw and seriously ill did not find rest. Stations of his wandering were Belgium , Hyeres , Algiers , Antibes , Egypt and Palestine .
  2. The article was written on the basis of Federico Confalonieri (Italian).

Individual evidence

  1. Ital. Teresa Casati
  2. ^ Italian Giuseppe Prina
  3. ^ Italian Luigi Porro Lambertenghi
  4. ^ Italian Piero Maroncelli
  5. Ital. Giorgio Pallavicino Trivulzio
  6. ^ Italian Muggiò