Leandro Arpinati

Leandro Arpinati (born February 29, 1892 in Civitella di Romagna , † April 22, 1945 in Argelato ) was an Italian politician and sports official .

Life

After finishing school, Arpinati started out as a railroad worker and journalist. He worked with his friend Benito Mussolini for the socialist newspaper La lotta di classe . In the Socialist Party he was part of the individual anarchist wing. During the First World War worked for the Italian railways. He joined the Fascist Party in 1919 and founded the local group in Milan. He founded the combat group Bologna (the second in Italy at all) and took part in the street fighting in Bologna and took part with his squadron in the march on Rome .

Subsequently, he was from 1921 to 1929 for Bologna and from 1931 to 1934 for Emilia-Romagna member of the Italian Parliament , he became the Deputy Secretary General of the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF) and in 1926 Lord Mayor of Bologna. In 1929 he moved to Rome and became State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior (1929–1933). He also became President of the Olympic Committee ( CONI ) and the Italian Football Association . He was so successful here that this was the most successful period in Italian sport: the Mussolini Boys were second behind the USA at the 1932 Summer Olympics and Italy won the 1934 World Cup in their own country and the 1938 World Cup on his own laid foundation. The Nazi government took over many of the elements of Italian state sport after 1933. In 1926 he intervened in the awarding of the Italian football championship, because as a result of a corruption scandal, the champions AC Turin were stripped of the championship without a new champion being proclaimed because too many clubs were involved in the scandal.

As early as 1930, as part of a purge of leftists, Arpinati was accused of planning an assassination attempt on Mussolini. He was therefore expelled from the party as an enemy of the regime and lost all public offices; In addition, he was sentenced to five years' exile on the island of Lipari (1934–1937) and then placed under house arrest that was repeatedly extended at his country estate near Bologna . In 1943, Arpinati refused to accept Mussolini's personal invitation and to take up an office in the Repubblica di Salò . On April 22, 1945, two days after the liberation of Italy by the Allies , he was shot dead by the communist branch of the Resistancea .

literature

• ARPINATI, Leandro. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 4:  Arconati-Bacaredda. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1962.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alessandro Luparini, Anarchici di Mussolini: dalla sinistra al fascismo tra rivoluzione e revisionismo, MIR, 2001.
2. ↑ Venerio Cattani, Rappresaglia, Vita e morte di Leandro Arpinati e Torquato Nanni gli amici di nemici Benito Mussolini, Marsilio Editori, Venezia., 1997
3. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Sport in Fascist Italy (1922-1933), in: G. Spitzer, D. Schmidt (Ed.): Sport between independence and external determination. Festschrift for Prof. Dr. Hajo Bernett . P. Wegener, Bonn 1986, pp. 213-226; Felice Fabrizio: Sport e fascismo. La politica sportiva del regime, 1924–1936. Guaraldi, Rimini 1976.
4. ↑ Arnd Krüger : “Today Germany belongs to us and tomorrow…”? The struggle for the sense of conformity in sport in the first half of 1933, in: W. BUSS & A. KRÜGER (eds.): Sport history: maintaining tradition and changing values. Festschrift for the 75th birthday of Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Henze . (= Series of publications by the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History, Vol. 2). Duderstadt: Mecke 1985, 175–196
5. ^ Gianni Brera, Storia critica del calcio italiano, Baldini & Castoldi, Milano, 1998.
6. ^ Stephen B. Whitaker: The anarchist-individualist origins of Italian fascism. New York: Peter Lang, 2002
7. ↑ Brunella Dalla Casa, Leandro Arpinati. Un fascista anomalo, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013.
8. ↑ Mauro Grimaldi, Leandro Arpinati. Un anarchico alla corte di Mussolini, La Stampa Sportiva, Roma, 1999.