Gaetano Salvemini
KEENE, FRANCES
GAETANO SALVEMINI By Frances Keene A NOBLE, cantankerous old man is dead, the man who was Fascism's Public Enemy No. 1. Professor Gaetano Salvemini is dead at the age of 85 after a life of...
...James B. Conant...
...Politically, Salvemini was an independent, both in this country—of which he became a citizen in 1938— and, after an initial alignment with Socialism, in Italy...
...He met this challenge and managed to put himself through the University of Florence...
...His subsequent teaching in Italy included the universities of Messina, Pisa and Florence...
...He had inspired many of the noblest Italian resistance fighters, starting with the great martyr...
...At the same time, he found time to supervise the translation of his basic historical works, The French Revolution, Under the Axe of Fascism and Mussolini s Diplomacy, and to co-author with Giorgio La Piana What to Do with Italy...
...Carlo Rosselli...
...Before his return, a welcome was prepared for him at the large Eliseo Theater in Rome—a most suitable choice, for in its ceilings several of his staunchest political allies had been hidden during the German occupation...
...President of Harvard while Salvemini occupied the Lauro de Bosis lectureship there, waived the retirement age for him...
...Salvemini is dead at 85, and all who knew or knew of him, and the many who have never heard his name, are richer, freer, stronger because he lived...
...When the whole assembly rose to its feet, stood a moment in silent tribute and then quietly sang the Hymn of Mameli, Republican Italy's new anthem, Salve-mini put his old, tired head on his arms and wept...
...He was impressed by Roosevelt's grasp of domestic affairs, especially in the Depression period, and later by the President's reaction to the growing tensions in Europe...
...He never talked of this period, but a friend who accompanied him on a trip to France 25 years later told of his crying out his long-dead wife's name as he paced to and fro, on a night of quaking thunder, before windows that opened on the Mediterranean...
...1. Professor Gaetano Salvemini is dead at the age of 85 after a life of ceaseless dedication, both in politics and as a teacher and historian, to what he conceited to be the truth...
...Apparently the least sentimental of men, though capable of violent emotion on certain vital issues, Salvemini took his time about responding to the postwar invitation of his old university in Florence to occupy the chair of history...
...Salvemini's personal life was a tragic series of trials, each one great enough to sour a lesser man...
...He ceaselessly scanned the American press, responding to things that stirred him with articles, letters and other comments designed to awaken the conscience of democratic-minded readers everywhere...
...To the hundreds of people who had worked with Salvemini in one capacity or another, this seemed only natural...
...But he was consistently critical of what he considered blind spots in New Deal policy, particularly with reference to Roman Catholic influence on the State Department...
...Italian literature...
...Salvemini's first wife and their four children died in the Messina earthquake of 1908...
...Born of poor peasants in Molfetta, Apulia, in 1873, Salvemini became the main support of a family of 14 (12 brothers and sisters) before he was 20...
...he set a tireless pace for those 30 and even 40 years his junior...
...But, as long as he lived, he gave of his time, thought, scholarship and loyalty to persons who seemed to him worthy...
...He could bring to a discussion of Robespierre's power-hunger an informed immediacy which few can summon even in heated debate on the issues of today...
...were not for him...
...As a teacher, Salvemini had few equals...
...For Salvemini had helped to shape the new Italy despite his bickerings, his worrying of long-buried bones, his flailing search for hidden influence...
...Long before Salvemini settled down to teaching at Harvard, he had decided that close personal relations FrANCUS Khhnh, editor and critic, is an expert on...
...In an effort to ally himself with another human being in need, Salvemini finally remarried—only to see his wife's two grown children take an active part in the pro-Fascist movement in France and ultimately collaborate with Germany...
...His ideas had lain behind the Justice and Liberty movement, ultimately to become the Action party, from which the first Premier of postwar Italy, Feruccio Parri, was chosen...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 38
