Romano Guarnieri

Romano Guarnieri (1925)

Romano Guarnieri (born November 20, 1883 in Adria , † October 29, 1955 in Perugia ) was an Italian Romance scholar , Italianist and foreign language teacher who worked in the Netherlands .

life and work

Guarnieri came from the Italian nobility. From 1898 he lived in Florence as a pupil and student and associated with numerous intellectuals who later became famous. In 1905 he left Italy and taught Italian at the Berlitz School in London, from 1907 in the Netherlands, first in Arnhem , from 1908 in Nijmegen , where he married a Dutch woman, and finally in The Hague , where he also gave lectures on Dante . At the same time he studied with Jean-Jacques Salverda de Grave at the University of Groningen and graduated with the state examination for Italian, the first in Holland. In 1914 he founded the Dutch Dante Society ( Italiaanse cultuurvereniging Dante Alighieri ). From 1915 he did military service for Italy.

From 1919 he taught Italian at the universities of Groningen and Leiden . In 1921 he became a private lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and received his doctorate there in 1924 with Salverda de Grave. From 1925 he occupied an extraordinary, and from 1928 a full editing department (lectureship) set up for him. In 1929 he became a private lecturer at the University of Utrecht and from 1934 he held an endowed professorship for Italian that had been created for him.

From 1926 onwards, Guarnieri held annual Italian summer courses for foreigners in Perugia and developed his own foreign language teaching and learning method, which (as a variant of the direct method ) was based in a special way on emotionality and dramatization.

After separating from his first wife (a divorce was not possible under Italian law), he had lived with the Jewish writer Carla Simons since the 1920s . Being close to Italian fascism , he rejected its anti-Semitic development. He was able to protect his partner from the attack of National Socialism as long as Mussolini was in power. In the fall of Mussolini in September 1943 was followed by his arrest and murder in Auschwitz. Guarnieri was also interned and expelled to Italy in December 1943. He spent two and a half months in prison in the summer of 1944 on suspicion of belonging to the Italian resistance .

In 1946 he returned to his Dutch professorship (retired in 1952, had previously turned down calls to London or Columbia University ) and also continued the summer courses, where he was fatally injured by a cyclist in 1955.

In 1954 he became president of the Italian cultural institute "Italiaans Instituut Gesticht" (Istituto Italiano di Cultura), which he inspired. At the University of Utrecht, the "Romano Guarnieri Lecture of Italian Studies" bears his name. A foundation (Fondazione Romano Guarnieri) and a lecture hall are named after him at the University of Perugia for foreigners .

Guarnieri was a Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy and Commander in the Order of Orange-Nassau . He was a member of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (MNL).

Works

• Scorci di vita ed arte nel Duecento italiano , Utrecht 1934 (inaugural lecture)
• Metodo di lingua italiana per gli stranieri , Perugia 1941, 1949, 1952
  • Nuova ed. Ampliata dall autore in collaborazione con il suo assistente Enzo Amorini che ne ha curato la stesura finale dopo la scomparsa del maestro , Perugia 1956, 1963, 1969, 1970

literature

• Maria Elisabeth Houtzager, [obituary], in: Jaarboek van de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde te Leiden , 1956–1957, pp. 106–113 ( http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_jaa003195701_01/_jaa003195701_01_0016.php )
• Sandra Covino:  GUARNIERI, Romano. In: Mario Caravale (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 60:  Grosso – Guglielmo da Forlì. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2003.
• Irma Dentz, Spelenderwijs Italiaans. Een handleiding voor zelfstudie van de Italiaanse taal gebaseerd op de methode van Romano Guarnieri , Amsterdam 1953
• Claudio Magris , Literature, law, and Europe. The first Romano Guarnieri lecture in Italian studies and a debate with Frans Timmermans , ed. by Harald Hendrix, Utrecht 2009

Web links

• Literature by and about Romano Guarnieri in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)