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Venice Between Fascism and International Tourism, 1911–45

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

R.J.B. Bosworth*
Affiliation:
History Department, University of Western Australia, WA, 6907, Australia, Telephone: 08 9380 2131, Fax: 08 9380 1069, E-mail: rjbb@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Summary

This article uses Venice as a case study of the ‘cultural revolution’ urged by some historians as a feature of the totalitarianizing ambition of the Fascist regime. But Bosworth finds a Venice which, though plainly affected by Fascism, nonetheless preserved much that was its own and much that expressed a continuity with the liberal era before 1922 and the liberal democratic one after 1945. He shows that many of the rhythms of Venetian life moved in ways which were different from those of political history, and argues that such differences ensured that Fascism scarcely instituted an all-controlling and completely alienating totalitarian society, at least in this Italian city.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. For some introduction to the history of Native Americans in Europe, see Feest, C.F. (ed.). Indians and Europe: An interdisciplinary collection of essays, Rader Verlag, Aachen, 1987.Google Scholar

2. Il Gazzettino, 14 October 1924.Google Scholar

3. See further context in Bosworth, R.J.B., The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and perspectives in the interpretation of Mussolini and Italian Fascism, Arnold, London, 1998.Google Scholar

4. I have recently published two articles on this subject, one reviewing decision-making about tourism at the top of the Fascist regime and the other viewing the decidedly continuous history of a great pre-Fascist, post-Fascist and Fascist tourist institution, the Touring Club Italiano. See Bosworth, R.J.B., ‘Tourist planning in Fascist Italy and the limits of a totalitarian culture’. Contemporary European History, 6, 1997; ‘The Touring Club Italiano and the nationalisation of the Italian bourgeoisie’, European History Quarterly, 27, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. For a history of this defeated radicalism, see Piva, F., Lotte contadine e origini del fascismo, Padova-Venezia: 1919–1922, Marsilio, Venice, 1977. For some introduction to the anti-Mussolinian (and anti-Catholic) radicalism of local leader Piero Marsich, see De Felice, R. (ed.), Autobiografia del Fascismo: antologia di testi fascisti 1919–1945, Minerva Italica, Bergamo, 1978, pp. 46–60, 96–105.Google Scholar

6. See also report of Augusto Turati's visit to Venice, his reception by Volpi and Giuriati and his speech in pleasure at the fact that local Fascism had long overcome its ‘difficult phase’. Il Gazzettino, 31 January 1928. The paper shortly thereafter underlined Volpi's charity or eminence by recording politely his donation to the Marciana Library of the text of his recent speech on ‘The abolition of the monetary exchange mechanism and the convertibility of the lira into gold’ (Il Gazzettino, 9 March 1928).Google Scholar

7. For an English-language biography, see Tinghino, J J., Edmondo Rossoni: From revolutionary syndicalism to Fascism, P. Lang, New York, 1991.Google Scholar

8. Mascagni, a regular critic of jazz and other forms of twentieth-century music, may not have been pleased by the holding on the Lido of a ‘great ball in honour of the Balilla’. Those who attended this happy event wore masks and costumes, and danced past midnight to ‘the insinuating rhythm of jazz’. Il Gazzettino, 19 February 1928. For a brief introduction to Mascagni and his prejudices, see Savona, A.V. and Straniero, M.L. (eds), Canti dell'Italia fascista (1919–1945), Garzanti, Milan, 1979, pp. 241–4.Google Scholar

9. Il Gazzettino, 25 February 1928.Google Scholar

10. Il Gazzettino, 28 February 1928.Google Scholar

11. For the standard and literal reading of this alleged process, see Gentile, E., The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1996 (Keith Botsford's translation of Il culto del littorio, Laterza, Bari, 1996).Google Scholar

12. The first and third verses ran:Google Scholar

Quando la Patria si chiamava Roma.Google Scholar

Italiano, dominavi tu! Google Scholar

Ma ti accolse il mondo—dolorante,Google Scholar

muto emigrante—.Google Scholar

Poi che la Patria cadde in servitù.Google Scholar

Ora che il genio della stirpe indome.Google Scholar

Da vinto si ridesta vincitore,.Google Scholar

Canta il poeta, afferma il pensatore.Google Scholar

Il sacro diritto della civiltà.Google Scholar

(chorus) Una è l'idea che ci lega.Google Scholar

Uno è l'imperio fascista.Google Scholar

La Patria non ci nega.Google Scholar

La Patria si conquista! … Google Scholar

Ara il tuo campo, bronzeo contadino,Google Scholar

Canta e sorridi di felicità;Google Scholar

Tu, col tuo genio artiere prodigioso, senza riposo,Google Scholar

Lascia un tuo segno nell'eternità.Google Scholar

Maestro, esalta, esalta nella scuola.Google Scholar

Il popolo d'Italia e la sua storia,Google Scholar

Di che il lavoro è luce, è vita, è gloria.Google Scholar

Arma e bandiera della libertà.Google Scholar

(Il Gazzettino 26 February 1928.).Google Scholar

[When the fatherland was Roman, oh Italian you ruled the world! Thereafter when the world welcomed the suffering, silent emigrant, the fatherland was reduced to a slave. But now the genius of the national stock proves indomitable. The conquered re-awakens as conqueror. And so poets and thinkers must hymn the sacred right of Italian civilization. Chorus. Plough your field, bronzed peasant, sing and smile in delight. You prodigious and tireless worker, with your native genius, leave your trace on eternity. Teacher, Stand up, stand up in your school for Italy and its history. Tell us that life is light, life and glory, the force and the flag of liberty. Chorus.] Google Scholar

13. They were also no doubt unimpressed by a contemporary campaign against swearing. Supported by both Catholic and Fascist circles, the desire to control these matters regularly resurfaced during these decades. Such resurfacing may be assumed to be evidence of the failure of the campaigns actually to change the cursing habits of the populace. See Il Gazzettino, 3 March 1928 and Picchini, L., Venezia contro la bestemmia e il turpiloquio, Grafiche Sorteri, Venice, 1937.Google Scholar

14. For an account of the early tourist development of the Lido, courtesy of the collaboration between the young Giuseppe Volpi and the Banca Commerciale Italiana, see Toeplitz, L., Il banchiere: al tempo in cui nacque, crebbe, e fiorì la Banca Commerciale Italiana, Edizioni Milano Nuovo, Milan, 1963. See, especially, p. 67 for a description of the bathing establishment at the Lido and an explanation that the more chic changing cabins lay to the left of the beach.Google Scholar

15. Il Gazzettino, 1 May 1911.Google Scholar

16. Il Gazzettino, 20 February, 6 March 1911 Google Scholar

17. For an account of confidence in Milan at this time, see Bosworth, , ‘The Touring Club Italiano, pp. 371410.Google Scholar

18. Il Gazzettino, 26 May 1911.Google Scholar

19. See the detailed account in Piva, F., Contadini in fabbrica: Marghera 1920–1945, Edizioni Lavoro, Rome, 1991.Google Scholar

20. See, for example, Vivante, R., Il problema delle abitazioni in Venezia, Prem. officine grafiche di Carlo Ferreri, Venice, 1910.Google Scholar

21. See, for example, Vivante, R., La malaria in Venezia, Stabilimento Fratelli Pozzo, Turin, 1902; Vivante, La lotta contro la tubercolosi in Venezia, Stucchi, Caretti & Co., Milan, 1915 and his rather pathetic suggestion, late in the Fascist era, that it would be a good idea to open a popular swimming pool in the city, Vivante, , Per la istituzione in Venezia di una piscina natatoria coperta, published lecture to Ateneo Veneto, Venice 1937.Google Scholar

22. This was the great unmentionable of the summer season of 1911. See Snowden, F., Naples in the Time of Cholera, 1884–1911, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995. Despite its title, Snowden's account also refers to Venice. See, too, the repeated denials in Il Gazzettino that summer that anything untoward was occurring (see, for example, the issues of 1, 2, 12 and 13 June).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Picchini, L., Tentati suicidi e suicidi con particolare riguardo alla città di Venezia, Grafiche Sorteri, Venice, 1933.Google Scholar

24. Il Gazzettino, 13 May 1911.Google Scholar

25. Il Gazzettino, 1 May 1911.Google Scholar

26. For an account of the relationship of Socialism and sport in this era, see Pivato, S., la bicicletta e il sol d'avvenire: sport e tempo libero nel socialismo della Belle époque, Ponte alle Grazie, Florence, 1992.Google Scholar

27. For a review of the reaction of Gray, E.M., the most grandiloquent of the nationalists, see Bosworth, R.J.B. ‘Tourist planning in Fascist Italy’, pp. 910.Google Scholar

28. Gray, E.M. in Il Gazzettino, 3 July 1917.Google Scholar

29. Il Gazzettino, 2, 9 August 1914.Google Scholar

30. Il Gazzettino, 9 October 1914.Google Scholar

31. Again for the example of Gray, see Bosworth, R.J.B. ‘Tourist planning in Fascist Italy’, p. 10.Google Scholar

32. Il Gazzettino, 9 September 1919. It would later be recalled nostalgically that the very first Biennali had been planned by intellectuals communing at Florian's. See Battisti, E., ‘Bartolommeo Bezzi e le origini della “Biennale” veneziana’, Nuova Antologia, f. 1795, July 1950, p. 293.Google Scholar

33. For this assertion, see, for example, Franzina, E., Venezia, Laterza, Bari, 1986, p. 62.Google Scholar

34. Il Gazzettino, 30 June 1921.Google Scholar

35. Il Gazzettino, 1 July 1921. A week later, a successful ‘Concerto Verdiano in Bacino San Marco’ was reported. Then the town band played its airs from pontoons anchored off the square and tastefully lit by ‘Bengal lights’ (8 July 1921).Google Scholar

36. Il Gazzettino, 19 July 1921.Google Scholar

37. Il Gazzettino, 28 July 1921.Google Scholar

38. Il Gazzettino, 19 July 1921.Google Scholar

39. See, especially, Corsi, M., Il teatro all'aperto in Italia, Rizzoli, Milan, 1939.Google Scholar

40. For some background, see Romano, S., Giuseppe Volpi: industria e finanza tra Giolitti e Mussolini, Bompiani, Milan, 1979 who is very kind; or, in English, Bosworth, R.J.B., Italy and the Wider World, Routledge, London, 1996, pp. 87–8 who is less so. Most fulsome of all is Cini, V., ‘Giuseppe Volpi: l'uomo’, in Associazione degli industriali nel quarantesimo anniversario di Porto Marghera e del Rotary Club di Venezia nel trentacinquesimo anniversario della sua fondazione (ed.), Giuseppe Volpi: ricordi e testimonianze, Venice, 1959. Cini defined the controversial Marghera site as ‘a poetic, complete and disinterested creation’ (p. 14) and noted that Volpi never ‘militated in any politicial party. He conceived politics as service, not as a profession. [His aim was merely] to serve the city and his country, in any event, in any way, under any legitimate government, outside and above any political belief or prejudice’ (p. 17). Cini, another very wealthy businessman, was the sponsor of the ‘Cini Foundation’, which remains a crucial backer of artistic life in the city.Google Scholar

41. Il Gazzettino, 24 July 1921.Google Scholar

42. Apparently, Volpi used to joke that his hobby was collecting decorations, and a friend recalled that he certainly possessed a lot. See Toeplitz, , Il banchiere, p. 141.Google Scholar

43. Il Gazzettino, 10, 18 July 1936.Google Scholar

44. Il Gazzettino, 11 July 1936.Google Scholar

45. Il Gazzettino, 24 July, 2 August 1936.Google Scholar

46. Il Gazzettino, 16 July 1936.Google Scholar

47. For some introduction to his well known patriotism, see Binchy, D.A., Church and State in Fascist Italy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1941, pp.534, 625, 683 noting, however. Piazza's quite public disapproval of the introduction of racist policies in 1938.Google Scholar

48. Il Gazzettino, 18 July 1936.Google Scholar

49. Il Gazzettino, 15 July 1936.Google Scholar

50. For a romantic and chatty narrative, see Paulon, F., La dogaressa contestata: la favolosa storia della Mostra di Venezia dalle regine alla contestazione, F. Paulon, Venice, 1971. For a more academic account of the Fascist Mostra, see Bono, F., ‘La mostra del cinema di Venezia: nascita e sviluppo nell'anteguerra (1932–1939)’, Storia contemporanea, XXII, 1991, pp. 513–49.Google Scholar

51. Il Gazzettino, 11 August 1936 noted the fineness of Volpi's speech to an applauding ‘cosmopolitan crowd’ at the opening of the IV Cinema Mostra. The Duke of Genoa and Dino Alfieri had also spoken while, before long, the Princess of Piedmont showed up to view Squadrone bianco (22 August). She was followed shortly after by Goebbels (29 August).Google Scholar

52. Il Gazzettino, 4 August 1936.Google Scholar

53. Il Gazzettino, 5 August 1936.Google Scholar

54. For some figures, see Bosworth, , Italy and the Wider World, p. 176.Google Scholar

55. Volpi, G., Venezia antica e moderna, ATENA, Rome, 1939, especially pp. 2930. Originally delivered as part of a speech given to Zurich University in January 1939, Volpi's words emphasized the ‘two Venices’, one—‘ancient, historic, immortal, that which must for ever keep its sacred monuments inviolate to be a museum alive with splendor’— and the other, as exemplified at Marghera, a busy hive of factories harnessing Fascist energy to the benefit of production and trade.Google Scholar

56. Il Gazzettino, 7, 16 July 1940. ‘Discipline’ also meant rejoicing in the availability of only one type of bread and rallying to expel from Piazza San Marco three women wearing slacks, deemed an unseemly form of dress during a national crisis (2, 11 July 1940).Google Scholar

57. Il Gazzettino, 20 July 1940. Quite a few female film stars were reported still to be holidaying on the Lido and may be presumed not to have retired every night with a text of Schopenhauer as their only comfort.Google Scholar

58. Il Gazzettino, 3 July 1940.Google Scholar

59. Il Gazzettino, 1 October 1940 would report an eventual attendance of 127, 393 with a resulting more than 1 million lire in sales.Google Scholar

60. Il Gazzettino, 21 July, 5 August 1940.Google Scholar

61. Il Gazzettino, 25 August 1940.Google Scholar

62. Il Gazzettino, 7 August 1940. At around this time the authorities did move to sequester foreign-owned property which included such well-known businesses as Thomas Cook and the Berlitz language school.Google Scholar

63. Il Gazzettino, 24 August 1940.Google Scholar

64. For Pavolini, in the not altogether convincing guise as Florentine impresario of a Fascist cultural revolution, see Schnapp, J. T., 18BL: Fascist mass spectacle’, Representations, 43, 1993, pp. 89115.Google Scholar

65. Il Gazzettino, 2 September 1940. Also prominent at the festival was the Duke of Genoa in his accustomed role as the most public member of the royal family in Venice.Google Scholar

66. Il Gazzettino, 13 September 1940. Cf. also Volpi di Misurata, G., ‘L'industria e la guerra’, Nuova Antologia, f. 1677, 1 February 1942, pp. 213–22. Volpi continued to enthuse over Italo—German military collaboration (27 October 1940). Typically he also found time to take on yet another local job, accepting nomination as President of the Venice Conservatorio (9 November 1940).Google Scholar

67. Il Gazzettino, 9, 10, 12 September 1940.Google Scholar

68. Il Gazzettino, 5, 6 September 1940.Google Scholar

69. Il Gazzettino, 9 October 1940.Google Scholar

70. For the fullest account, see De Felice, R., Mussolini l'alleato 1940–1945 (2 vols), Einaudi, Turin, 1990–7.Google Scholar

71. Il Gazzettino, 15 May 1941.Google Scholar

72. Il Gazzettino, 24 May 1941.Google Scholar

73. Il Gazzettino, 31 May, 2, 3, June, 24 August 1941.Google Scholar

74. Il Gazzettino, 24 June, 14, 21 July, I, 18 August, 14, 15 September 1941. The Redentore festival that year was described as ‘severe and nostalgic’. It did not include the usual baccanale through to dawn.Google Scholar

75. Il Gazzettino, 8, 11 September 1941. Somehow Rossini, Cimarosa and Mozart were played at the Fenice as part of the festival. Volpi presided over the closing of the event (29 September 1941).Google Scholar

76. Il Gazzettino, 15, 31 August, 10, 15 September 1941. Exhibiting at the festival were film-makers from Bohemia, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Holland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey and Hungary—apart, of course, from Italy and Germany. Blasetti's La Corona di ferro won the Coppa Mussolini but Rossellini's La nave bianca was also singled out for praise as displaying ‘a clear and luminous talent, particularly aware of the epoch in which we live’.Google Scholar

77. Il Gazzettino, 17, 26 June 1941. He would return in December for an official meeting with Ciano (15 December 1941).Google Scholar

78. Il Gazzettino, 5, 24 July 1941.Google Scholar

79. Il Gazzettino, 26, 29 July, 6 August 1941. The exhibition was duly opened by Volpi in the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Genoa (21 August). That same day it was announced that wartime austerity meant in future that hotels would receive only one type of soap.Google Scholar

80. Il Gazzettino, 9 August 1941.Google Scholar

81. Il Gazzettino, 18 September 1941.Google Scholar

82. Il Gazzettino, 22 October 1941. The rather curious collection of Mussolini's thoughts, collected by a young true believer, provides endorsing evidence of the Duce's admiration for Volpi. See De Begnac, Y., Taccuini mussoliniani (ed. Perfetti, F.), Il Mulino, Bologna, 1990, pp. 505–21.Google Scholar

83. Il Gazzettino, 1 October, 26 November, 3 December 1941, 6 July 1942.Google Scholar

84. Il Gazzettino, 2, 23 July 1942.Google Scholar

85. Il Gazzettino, 8 July 1942.Google Scholar

86. Il Gazzettino, 12 July 1942.Google Scholar

87. Il Gazzettino, 15 July 1942.Google Scholar

88. Il Gazzettino, 20, 27 July, 2 August, 11, 29 October 1942.Google Scholar

89. Il Gazzettino, 30 August 1942.Google Scholar

90. Il Gazzettino, 11 August 1942.Google Scholar

91. Il Gazzettino, 13 February 1942.Google Scholar

92. Il Gazzettino, 7 July 1943.Google Scholar

93. Il Gazzettino, 5 June, 7 July 1943. The censor's eye was still attracted by 50 men and women, some of them foreign, arrested on the Lido for wearing costumes deemed too revealing (10 July).Google Scholar

94. Il Gazzettino, 3 April, 11 May, 23 June 1943.Google Scholar

95. Il Gazzettino, 26, 27, 28 July 1943.Google Scholar

96. Il Gazzettino, 4 August 1943.Google Scholar

97. Il Gazzettino, 13, 17 September, 2, 7 October, 20 November, 25 December 1943, 24 February, 8, 21 April, 1, 11 June 1944. In the elegant hall of the Ateneo Veneto, a certain dott. Giocondo Protti spoke on ‘The Jewish question as an illness of humankind’. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he explained, demonstrated why Jews should be treated like a cancer. His speech was duly applauded (Il Gazzettino, 1 April 1944). The Fenice also perhaps kept an eye on the times by successively staging I vespri siciliani. La forza del destino and Mefistofele. Google Scholar

98. Il Gazzettino, 27 June 1943.Google Scholar

99. Gentile, , The sacralization of politics, p. ix.Google Scholar

100. Gentile has explored some of these complications but not always in a convincing manner. Gentile, E., La Grande Italia: ascesa e declino del mito della nazione nel ventesimo secolo, Mondadori, Milan, 1997.Google Scholar