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'Alcide De Gasperi' (3 April 1881 – 19 August 1954) was an Italian statesman and politician. He is considered to be one of the Founding Fathers of the European communities, along with the Frenchman Robert Schuman and the German Konrad Adenauer.

Contents

Biography

See also

Bibliography

External links

Biography

De Gasperi was born in Pieve Tesino in Trentino, at that time belonging to Austria-Hungary, now part of the Province of Trento in Italy.
He studied philosophy and literature in Vienna and afterward became a journalist. In 1911 he became a Member of Parliament in the Austrian Reichsrat. His home region was transferred to Italy after the First World War. In 1919 he was one of the founders, with Don Luigi Sturzo, of the Italian Popular Party, or ''Partito Popolare''; starting in 1921 he was an MP for the party. He later became party leader and Secretary-General.
De Gasperi served a 16-month jail sentence as an anti-fascist. After his release in 1931 he worked in the library of the Vatican; there, in 1943, during the Second World War, he organized the establishment of the first (and at the time, illegal) Christian Democracy party, or ''Democrazia Cristiana'', drawing upon the ideology of the Popular Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive Christian Democratic governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for one leader in modern Italian politics.
In 1946, when Italy became a Republic, he was elected Capo Provvisorio dello Stato (Provisional Head of State) Pro-Tempore and Regnante Reggente. He is the only man to have become President of the Council, Republic and Regent.
In 1952 he received the Karlspreis (engl.: International Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen), an Award by the German city of Aachen to people who contributed to the European idea and European peace. That same year he vetoed a coalition with former fascists and monarchists for the city of Rome elections advocated by some ecclesiastical circles (the so-called ''operazione Sturzo''); Democrazia Cristiana won, but the governmental block lost some 11%. Subsequently, Pope Pius XII denied him audience, which he accepted as a Catholic but protesting as Italian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. In that famous letter, he wrote to the Pope: «As a christian I accept the humiliation, although I don't know how justify it; but as President of the Council (''Prime minister'') and Foreign Minister, the dignity and authority which I represent and of whom I cannot deprive myself even in my private relationships, imposes me to express my amazement».
De Gasperi died in Sella di Valsugana, in Trentino. He is buried in the Basilica di San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, a basilica in Rome.

See also

★ Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement

★ Alcide de Gasperi Building

Bibliography

★ Man from the Mountains, biography in Time Magazine, May 25, 1953

★ Pietro Scoppola, ''La proposta politica di De Gasperi'', Bologna, Il Mulino, 1977.

★ Giulio Andreotti, ''Intervista su De Gasperi''; a cura di Antonio Gambino, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1977.

★ Giulio Andreotti, ''De Gasperi visto da vicino'', Milano, Rizzoli, 1986.

★ Nico Perrone, ''De Gasperi e l'America'', Palermo, Sellerio, 1995.

★ ''Alcide De Gasperi: un percorso europeo'', a cura di Eckart Conze, Gustavo Corni, Paolo Pombeni, Bologna, Il mulino, 2004.

★ Piero Craveri, ''De Gasperi'', Bologna, Il Mulino, 2006

External links

★ Alcide De Gasperi - one of the EU's founding fathers Page from the Italian presidency of the EU showing how Alcide De Gasperi fits into the European Union history.

★ Alcide De Gasperi Biography A biography by a student of the University of Wisconsin