Giacomo Matteotti

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Giacomo Matteotti at the beginning of his political career

Giacomo Matteotti (born May 22, 1885 in Fratta Polesine , † June 10, 1924 in Rome ) was an Italian politician , general secretary of the Partito Socialista Unitario (PSU) and member of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI). The assassination of Matteotti by Italian fascists in 1924 marks the beginning of Mussolini's dictatorship .

Life

Matteotti's father was a coppersmith from Trentino who had made his fortune in Emilia-Romagna .

Matteotti joined PSI while studying law at the University of Bologna . He was controversial within the party because he criticized abuses such as protectionism and arrogance of the functionaries and because he pursued a reformist instead of a revolutionary course. But since he was a talented agitator and often spoke to workers, he built a solid following. In 1919, 1921 and 1924 Matteotti was elected to the Camera dei deputati , one of the two parliamentary chambers, for the Ferrara region . He also became General Secretary of the PSU, which was newly founded in 1922 and which had split off from the PSI. After the king installed Benito Mussolini as prime minister in 1922 , the fascist party received over sixty percent of the vote in the  parliamentary elections of April 6, 1924 through election fraud. Matteotti gave a fiery speech in parliament on May 30, 1924, in which he challenged the elections, blamed the fascists for the election fraud and finally addressed Mussolini directly.

On June 10th he was kidnapped and murdered by six Squadristi . The disappearance of Matteotti and the discovery of his body two months later, 23 kilometers north of Rome, led to a significant change in mood in large parts of the population. The majority did not doubt that the fascists were behind the murder. Mussolini's existing popularity plummeted. His political opponents reacted by withdrawing their deputies from parliament (see Aventinians ).

It was not until January 3, 1925, that Mussolini succeeded in regaining the initiative with a speech to the House of Representatives. As the leader of the Fascist Party, he took full “moral, political and historical responsibility” for the murder, but without mentioning any direct connection. When he was asked to charge him for the crime, his opponents did not comply with the prospect of such an undertaking.

Grave of Giacomo Matteotti, Fratta Polesine , Rovigo

The "Matteotti Crisis" was a turning point in Mussolini's policy. While he had previously tried to work to a certain extent with the parliamentary institutions, he then focused on consistently suppressing the opposition, restricting the freedom of the press and building up the OVRA secret police .

Of the six alleged murderers, three were sentenced to five years in prison each in March 1926, but after only two months by King Victor Emmanuel III. pardoned. After the end of World War II, the case was reopened in 1947 and the three surviving murderers were sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The Matteotti Committee

Matteotti's name stood for international solidarity, initially for the victims of Italian fascism, and later also for those persecuted by National Socialism. In 1924, the Matteotti Committee was founded in Belgium for politically persecuted Italians who had fled there and later expanded its range of activities. “From 1933 the committee in Paris acted as the auxiliary committee of the International Trade Union Confederation and was also known as the International Matteotti Fund. [...] The committee was available to political refugees from all countries, but above all to social democrats and trade unionists, although the funds were very limited. He owned z. B. also to B. Kreisky , who enabled the persecuted through the committee in Paris to escape. In Denmark, the Matteotti Committee was an important contact point for social democratic emigrants from around 1934. In the late autumn of 1939 it supported 285 political exiles, including F. Bauer . R. Hansen was the managing director . In Sweden there was the ›Community of German Refugees at the Matteotti Committee‹ as part of the ›Working Group of German Refugees in Sweden‹. ” When Denmark was occupied by German troops on April 9, 1940 , Richard Hansen was able to flee to Sweden. He succeeded in taking the Matteotti Committee's name files with him, thereby preventing the Germans from accessing it.

The Paris line of Matteotti Committee had Walter Friedlander belongs.

reception

Streets across Italy are named after Giacomo Matteotti.

The Trofeo Matteotti road bike race has been held annually in Pescara since 1945 in memory of Matteotti .

In 1973 the Matteotti affair with Franco Nero as Matteotti and Mario Adorf as Mussolini was filmed under the title Il delitto Matteotti (German title: The Murder of Matteotti ).

literature

  • Luigi Cyaheled: Matteotti è vivente , Napoli, Casa Editrice Vedova Ceccoli & Figli, 1924.
  • Carlo Silvestri: Matteotti, Mussolini e il dramma italiano , Roma, Ruffolo, 1947.
  • Renzo De Felice : Mussolini il fascista , vol. II.I, La conquista del potere. 1921–1925 , Torino, Einaudi, 1966.
  • Carlo Rossini: Il delitto Matteotti from il Viminale e l'Aventino , Bologna, Il Mulino, 1968.
  • Antonio G. Casanova: Matteotti. Una vita per il socialismo , Milano, Bompiani, 1974.
  • Adrian Lyttelton : La conquista del potere. Il fascismo dal 1919 al 1929 , Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1974.
  • Ives Bizzi: Da Matteotti a Villamarzana. 30 anni di lotte nel Polesine (1915–1945) , Treviso, Giacobino, 1975.
  • Carlo Silvestri: Matteotti, Mussolini e il dramma italiano , Milano, Cavallotti editore, 1981.
  • Alexander J. De Grand: Breve storia del fascismo , Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1983.
  • Matteo Matteotti: Quei vent'anni. Dal fascismo all'Italia che cambia , Milano, Rusconi, 1985.
  • Fabio Andriola: Mussolini. Prassi politica e rivoluzione sociale , Sl, FUAN, 1990.
  • Giacomo Matteotti: Speech to the Chamber of Deputies on May 30, 1924 . European Publishing House , Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-434-50124-X .
  • Mauro Canali : Il delitto Matteotti. Affarismo e politica nel primo governo Mussolini , Camerino, Università degli studi, 1996; Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997. ISBN 88-15-05709-9 ; 2004. ISBN 88-15-09729-5 .
  • Valentino Zaghi : Giacomo Matteotti , Sommacampagna, Cierre, 2001. ISBN 88-8314-110-5 .
  • Marcello Staglieno : Arnaldo e Benito. Due fratelli , Milano, Mondadori, 2003. ISBN 88-04-51264-4 .
  • Mauro Canali: Il delitto Matteotti , Bologna, Il Mulino, 2004.
  • Nunzio Dell'Erba : Matteotti: azione politica e pensiero giuridico , in: "Patria indipendente", 28 maggio 2004, a. LIII, nn. 4-5, pp. 21-23.
  • Stanislao G. Pugliese : Fascism, Anti-fascism, and the Resistance in Italy: 1919 to the Present , Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. ISBN 0-7425-3123-6 .
  • Enrico Tiozzo : La giacca di Matteotti e il processo Pallavicini. Una rilettura critica del delitto , Roma, Aracne, 2005. ISBN 88-548-0041-4 .
  • Gianpaolo Romanato : Un italiano diverso. Giacomo Matteotti , Milano, Longanesi, 2010.
  • Giovanni Borgognone : Come nasce una dittatura. L'Italia del delitto Matteotti , Bari, Laterza, 2012. ISBN 978-88-420-9833-1 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anne E. Dünzelmann: Stockholm Walks: In the Footsteps of German Exiles 1933-1945, Books on Demand, Norderstedt, 2017, ISBN 978-3-74482-995-3 , p. 224
  2. ↑ History workshop of the SPD: Resistance in the Nazi era (Section 3.2)
  3. ^ Karl-Heinz Füssl: German-American cultural exchange in the 20th century. Education - Science - Politics , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2004, ISBN 3-593-37499-4 , p. 160
personal data
SURNAME Matteotti, Giacomo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian politician (PSU, PSI), member of the Camera dei deputati
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Fratta Polesine
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1924
Place of death near Rome