Ottavio Abbati

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Ottavio Abbati, 1939

Ottavio Eusvaldo Ferdinando Abbati (born April 5, 1897 in Fabriano , † January 6, 1951 in Rome ) was an Italian anti-fascist and publicist . He lived as a political refugee in France, was a cadre of the Republican Party of Italy in Lazio and in French exile and a member of the Executive Commission of the Italian League for Human Rights (LIDU) .

Life

youth

Although the Abbati family originally came from Savignano di Romagna , Ottavio Abbati grew up with two younger siblings in modest circumstances in Fabriano, the place of origin of his mother Cesira Rossi. His father, Giuseppe Abbati, was a hairdresser and socialist . In 1912 he and his family settled in western Switzerland. In Malley , Renens , Vevey and Geneva he learned the trade of hairdresser and began to be interested in political ideas by turning to the life and writings of Giuseppe Mazzini . In 1917 he took part in the First World War. In 1918 he became involved again as a volunteer with the Italian Auxiliary Forces in France (TAIF) . After the war he settled in Rome.

Political engagement in Rome (1918–1936)

As a close associate of the politician and lawyer Giovanni Conti , he first became secretary of the Republican Youth Association ( Federazione giovanile repubblicana ) of the Lazio region, then member of the Executive Commission of the National Youth Association, in this capacity primarily responsible for propaganda and organization. In 1921 he took part in the Youth Congress of the Lazio Region in Castelgandolfo , and a year later in the Youth Congress in Rome. In 1922 he took part in the national congress of the Republican Party in Trieste as a representative of the sections of Corchiano , Montalto di Castro , Palombara Sabina , Rome and Viterbo .

After the dissolution of the Republican Party, he continued to work underground. In July 1932 he and other people were arrested for founding an offshoot of the Giustizia e Libertà movement in Rome and, after months of imprisonment in Regina-Coeli prison, sent into exile on the island of Ponza . After his return to Rome, under constant surveillance and arrested several times, he managed to escape to France at the end of December 1936 .

Paris, 54 rue Saint-Lazare, headquarters of the Republican Party of Italy in exile

Political engagement in France (1937–1940)

Abbati was mainly active in the organization of the Republican Party in Marseille and Nice (recruiting new members, founding new sections, etc.). In January 1938, Randolfo Pacciardi called him to Paris and entrusted him with the administration and editing of La Giovine Italia , a political weekly newspaper for republican emigrants in France, the first issue of which appeared in Paris in December 1937 and in Annemasse from September 1938 . In 1938 he held the secretariat of the Republican Party for a few months.

Abbati was active in the Italian Human Rights League (LIDU) and was elected to the Executive Commission at the LIDU Congress in Nantes on July 2, 1938. Informants of the fascist political police who had smuggled into the party and the LIDU forwarded numerous reports about him to the Ministry of the Interior in Rome. Although apolitical for obvious reasons, his correspondence with his family in Rome was also monitored; all letters were read, photographed, evaluated and archived.

Diary entry about a failed escape attempt from Oran (1941)

Flight, internment and liberation (1940–1945)

After the French defeat in 1940, the fascist police sent the German occupation authorities a list with the names of 123 "dangerous subversives" who had been put out for arrest and who were living in France, including Abbati and Pacciardi. Under the impression of the threat of arrest and extradition to Italy, they tried to flee together from Marseille via North Africa to the United States , but only Pacciardi succeeded, while Abbati and some political supporters (Antonio Bedei, Francesco Blesio, Francesco Burrai, Raffaele Savorani, Augusto Testa) were stuck in Oran after several failed escape attempts . The escape route via Oran, organized by Pacciardi, turned out to be a dead end.

Abbati's wife, Caterina Martini, followed her husband to Annemasse with their child in December 1938. Due to an agreement between the Ministry of the Interior, the Roman police and the Italian consulate in Chambéry , she was arrested on the French-Italian border in the autumn of 1940, initially transferred to the women's camp in Pollenza without a court judgment and then interned in the province of Avellino until the end of 1942 , during the eleven-year-old son was handed over by the police to his grandmother in Rome.

Ottavio Abbati was interned by the Vichy authorities in Tiaret in 1941 ; the occasional donations from friends in Switzerland - including Egidio Reale and the two Ticino socialists Francesco Borella and Guglielmo Canevascini - as well as in Tunis ( Guido Levi ) enabled him to survive. In 1943 he was liberated by American troops. He then worked for the American military authorities in Algiers as part of anti-fascist propaganda; in February 1945 he returned to Rome.

Post-war period (1945–1951)

In March 1945 he was commissioned by Pacciardi to reorganize the party, but dismissed in July 1945 because of differences of opinion about the party's course. He ran for parliamentary elections in 1948, but could not win a seat. Ottavio Abbati died in Rome on January 6, 1951.

Honor

On December 9, 1976, on the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the exceptional laws and the formation of the fascist special court , Ottavio Abbati and 16 other anti-fascists were posthumously awarded a medal from the city of Rome “for their commitment against the dictatorship”.

literature

  • Il Diario inedito di Ottavio Abbati. In: Archivio Trimestrale. 2/1981, pp. 311-329
  • [Abbati Ottavio]: Album Documentario familiare (a cura del figlio Alberto Mario). In: Bollettino della Domus Mazziniana, Pisa. 2/1977, p. 318 (review)
  • Associazione Nazionale Perseguitati Politici Italiani Antifascisti ANPPIA (Ed.): Antifascisti nel Casellario Politico Centrale. Roma 1988, Volume 1, pp. 30-31
  • Sonia Castro: Egidio Reale tra Italia, Svizzera e Europa. Milano 2011, pp. 204-206
  • Sonia Castro (ed.): Guglielmo Canevascini - Egidio Reale: Al di sopra di ogni frontiera - Carteggio 1927-1957. Lugano 2016, pp. 96–97, 105, 117, 10, 137
  • Ennio Ceccarini: Ottavio Abbati. In: Archivio Trimestrale, Rassegna storica di studi sul movimento repubblicano. 4/1975, pp. 383-384
  • Giuseppe Chiostergi (a cura di Elena Fussi Chiostergi e Vittorio Parmentola): Diario Garibaldino ed altri scritti e discorsi . Milano 1965, p. 40
  • Giovanni Conti: Controcorrente e copialettere. Roma without a year, pp. 36–37, 82, 101
  • Santi Fedele: I repubblicani in esilio nella lotta contro il fascismo (1926–1940) . Firenze 1989, p. 97
  • Patrizia Gabrielli: Con il freddo nel cuore. Uomini e donne nell'emigrazione antifascista . Roma 2004, pp. 25, 27, 29–31, 70, 92, 97, 135, 136, 145
  • Mario Giovana: Giustizia e Libertà in Italia. Storia di una cospirazione antifascista 1929–1937 . Torino 2005, pp. 316-318
  • Jean-Claude Lescure: Un parti dans une transition démocratique. La refondation du Parti républicain Italy (1944-1946). In: Vie et mort des partis politiques. Genèse, cycle de vie et déclin des partis politiques (Actes du Congrès de l'Association française de sciences politiques), Grenoble 2010, pp. 46–47
  • Paolo Palma: Una bomba per il duce. La centrale antifascista di Pacciardi a Lugano (1927-1933) . 2003, pp. 210-211, 237, 240-241
  • Massimo Scioscioli: Si fa presto a dire coerenza, di Alberto Mario Abbati. In: Archivio Trimestrale. 4/1977, pp. 355–356 (review)
  • Elisa Signori: Républicains et giellistes en France entre guerre d'Espagne et Résistance. In: Pierre Milza, Denis Peschanski (dir.): Exils et Migration. Italiens et Espagnols en France (1938-1946). 1995, pp. 554-555, 561-562, 565
  • Elisa Signori: Frammenti di vita e d'esilio - Giulia Bondanini, una scelta antifascista . Zurigo 2006, p. 11
  • La Giovine Italia (La Jeune Italie / La Jeune Europe). No. 1/1937 (December 4, 1937) - No. 7/1940 (May 29, 1940)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ L'Alba Repubblicana , February 27, 1921
  2. ^ Oronzo Reale : L'opera di propaganda e organizzazione della Commissione Esecutiva. In: L'Alba Repubblicana , IV., N. 15, May 21, 1922, p. 2
  3. ↑ Italian Republican Party: Resoconto sommario del XV. Congresso Nazionale, Trieste 22-25 agosto 1922. Rome 1922, pp. 90-93
  4. ^ Adriano Dal Pont, Simonetta Carolini (ed.): L'Italia al confino. Le ordinanze di assegnazione al confino emesse dalle Commissioni provinciali dal novembre 1926 al luglio 1943 . Milano 1983, Vol. 3, pp. 1377-1378; Mario Giovana: Giustizia e Libertà in Italia 1929–1937. Storia di una cospirazione antifascista . Torino 2005, pp. 316-318
  5. ^ Elisa Signori: Républicains et giellistes en France entre guerre d'Espagne et Résistance. In: Pierre Milza, Denis Peschanski (dir.): Exils et Migration. Italiens et Espagnols en France (1938-1946). 1995, p. 554
  6. ^ The last edition of La Giovine Italia appeared on May 29, 1940.
  7. ^ Il Diario inedito di Ottavio Abbati. In: Archivio Trimestrale. 2/1981, p. 318; La Giovine Italia. January 22, 1938, p. 3
  8. ^ La Giovine Italia. July 9, 1938, p. 3
  9. ↑ Patrizia Gabrielli: Con il freddo nel cuore. Uomini e donne nell'emigrazione antifascista . 2004
  10. ^ Elisa Signori: Républicains et giellistes en France entre guerre d'Espagne et Résistance. In: Pierre Milza, Denis Peschanski (dir.): Exils et Migration. Italiens et Espagnols en France (1938-1946). 1995, pp. 563-564
  11. ↑ Some of these anti-fascists played an important political role after the war, e. B. the communists Giorgio Amendola, Luigi Longo and Palmiro Togliatti , the socialists Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani, Pietro Nenni and Giuseppe Saragat , the former diplomat Carlo Sforza .
  12. ↑ The debacle of the flight connection via Oran and the failure of the cooperation between Pacciardi and the Center Américain de Secours in Marseille are described in: Anne Klein: Refugee Policy and Refugee Aid 1940–1942. The Varian Fry Committee in Marseille and New York . Berlin 2007, pp. 354-355
  13. ↑ For an in-depth look at the internment policy of the fascist state, see p. Klaus Voigt, Refuge on Revocation. Exile in Italy , Stuttgart (Klett-Cotta) 1989 (vol. 1) and 1993 (vol. 2)
  14. ^ Elisa Signori, Frammenti di vita e d'esilio. Giulia Bondanini, una scelta antifascista (1926-1955) , Zurigo 2006 (L'Avvenire dei Lavoratori), p. 11
  15. ↑ Giovanni Conti: Controcorrente e copialettere. Roma without a year, pp. 67, 101
  16. ↑ La Voce Repubblicana. January 9, 1951
  17. ↑ Nel 50. anniversario delle leggi eccezionali - Ieri in Campidoglio i combattenti della lotta antifascista. In: L'Unità. December 10, 1976, p. 2. With him were also Giulio Turchi (posthumous), Fausto Nitti (posthumous), Mario Magri (posthumous), Umberto Terracini , Sandro Pertini , Camilla Ravera , Luigi Longo , Pietro Nenni , Vittorio Foa , Giorgio Amendola , Claudio Cianca, Gioacchino Malavasi, Lucio Lombardo Radice, Maria Baroncini, Alberto Jacometti and Vincenzo Baldazzi honored.
personal data
SURNAME Abbati, Ottavio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abbati, Ottavio Eusvaldo Ferdinando (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian anti-fascist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Fabriano
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1951
Place of death Rome