Giacomo Acerbo

Giacomo Acerbo (born July 25, 1888 in Loreto Aprutino , Pescara Province , † January 9, 1969 in Rome ) was an Italian agronomist and a fascist politician. He drafted the “Acerbo Law”, an amendment to the electoral law that gave the party with the highest vote two thirds of the seats in parliament.

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Acerbo was the son of a long-established and respected family, he received his doctorate in 1912 as an agricultural scientist in Pisa. As an interventionist, he and his brother Tito volunteered for military service. He ended the First World War as a captain , who was awarded the Medaglie d'argento three times, and his brother Tito, who was also highly decorated, died. He then devoted himself to his university career as a lecturer at the business faculty. In addition, he was temporarily chairman of the front-line fighters' association Teramo and Chieti , which separated from the national association after the elections in 1919 and formed its own "Fascio di combattimento".

Elected to the “national bloc” in 1921, he offered himself as leader of the local conservatives and intervened in excesses of the Squadristi . At the national level, he contributed to the peace pact with the socialists and was elected to the Grand Fascist Council of the PNF ( Partito Nazionale Fascista ) in November . During the “ March on Rome ” he kept in touch with the Quirinal . He then supported Mussolini as Undersecretary of State in forming the first fascist government. Here he developed a lively political publication activity. Since 1927 he has also published books on agricultural science and history.

Acerbo was also a member of Freemasonry , which soon became a target of Mussolini. After the Grand Master Torrigiani declared under pressure from Mussolini that fascism and Freemasonry were incompatible, the lodges were partly forcibly dissolved.

Acerbo stood with his name behind the electoral reform, which allocated two thirds of the parliamentary seats to the party with the strongest vote, provided it received at least 25% of the vote. This “Acerbo Law”, which was first elected in November 1923, was approved by Vittorio Orlando and Antonio Salandra in the review process . Once again a member of parliament in 1924 and awarded the title “Barone dell'Aterno”, he resigned from office as marginally involved in the Matteotti murder case .

In 1924 he founded the Coppa Acerbo in memory of his brother Tito Acerbo and received the military gold medal (Italian: Medaglia d'oro al valor militare ). In January 1926 he was elected Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies (ital. Camera dei deputati), the office he held until 1929, when he became Minister for Agriculture and Forestry (ital. Ministro dell'Agricoltura e delle Foreste) and himself turned to the projects of the “bonifica integrale”, ie the drainage of swampy soils.

In 1938 he was a consultant on the design of the law for the transformation of the Chamber of Deputies into the "Chamber of Confederations and Corporations" (Italian: Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni). During the Second World War he was deployed in the general staff service as a colonel, mostly in the Balkans. In February 1943 he was nominated Minister of Finance . On July 25, 1943, he voted against Mussolini's re-election in the Fascist Grand Council and went underground. He was sentenced to death in absentia at the Verona trial initiated by Mussolini as president of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana . Picked up by the Italian resistance , he was sentenced to death by a jury , a sentence that was soon commuted to prison. In an appeal process, he was acquitted and in 1951 he was given back his teaching license. In 1962 he was honored by the President of the Republic Antonio Segni for his services in teaching. In 1953 and 1958 he ran in the parliamentary elections on the list of monarchists, but was unsuccessful. Acerbo also made a name for itself as a collector of antique ceramics, which can be seen in the Abruzzo Antique Ceramics Gallery in Castelli .

Works (selection)

• Studii riassuntivi di agricoltura antica , Sindacato nazionale fascista tecnici agricoli, Roma, 1927.
• Problemi edinterest dell'agricoltura italiana , Tip. della Camera dei Deputati, Roma, 1927.
• Le basi economiche della colonizzazione romana nell'Africa settentrionale , Roma, 1928

literature

• Antonio Parisella:  ACERBO, Giacomo. In: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 34:  Primo supplemento AC. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1988.

Web links

Commons : Giacomo Acerbo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry in the DBI on treccani.it
• The Acerbo law on camera.it
• Newspaper article about Giacomo Acerbo in the press kit 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .