Tales of ordinary dictatorship: Italian librarians and the fascist regime (1922-1942)

Abstract

The article does not try to deal with the more extensive theme of "fascism and libraries", library policy and the achievements of the fascist regime in this field, but aims at a understanding of the presence and positions of librarians in this stage of the history of Italian society. The fascist period is one of technical modernization of Italian libraries but also of fixation of the Italian library system. This period sees the birth, in 1930, of a professional representation of librarians (the Association of Italian librarians), and a few years earlier of a top government unit, the General Direction of Academies and Libraries (established in 1926 and still basically the same to this day), that acted as a filter between politics and the profession.
The grasp of fascism among Italian librarians, in the years around the March on Rome (1922), was very limited. Many liberals considered fascism as a "lesser evil" with respect to the social tensions of 1919-1920, but the librarians who supported fascism before the March on Rome were few and of little importance. Among these were count Giuseppe Lando Passerini (1858-1932), librarian at the National Library of Florence and at the Laurenziana, and Antonio Toschi, librarian in Bologna. Not one important personality of the library world supported the Manifesto of the intellectuals of fascism (1925) written by Giovanni Gentile; few were also the supporters of the reply drafted by Benedetto Croce, but among these we find Emidio Martini, retired director of the National Library of Naples.
Among the exponents of the Fascist Party we find some library administrators, such as Italo Lunelli (1891-1960) director of the Public Library of Trent and Leonardo D'Addabbo (1893-1958) director of the Consortium Library of Bari, who however did not have a significant role in the profession. The most interesting personality is Piero Zama (1886-1984), founder of the Fascist Party in Faenza and director of the Municipal Library of the city from 1920 to 1957. Zama, however, abandoned fascism because of his reactionary evolution and was subsequently persecuted.
Libraries were often a sort of hideout for those contrary to fascism. Gerardo Bruni (1896-1975) and Igino Giordani (1894-1980), who had worked with don Sturzo in the Popular Party, were sent by the Vatican Library to study librarianship in America, in 1927, and later also Alcide De Gasperi, president of the Council of Ministers after the Liberation, worked in the Vatican Library. Anti-fascist high school teachers and university professors that the regime wanted to remove from teaching were often destined to state libraries: for example Bianca Ceva and Elena Valla to the National Library of Milan, the philosopher Giuseppe Rensi to the University Library of Genoa and Pilo Albertelli, Resistance hero, to the National Library of Rome.
After the World Congress of Libraries and Bibliography held in Rome and Venice in 1929, the Association of Italian Librarians (from 1932 the Italian Association for Libraries, AIB) was founded, under the control of the Minister for National Education but independent of the Fascist Party. The Fascist Party formed its own Librarians' Section in the Fascist Association of Civil Servants and later in the Fascist School Association: these Associations were widely supported, due to the advantages that they offered, but they carried out no significant activities in the library field. The relative independence of the AIB from the pressure of Fascism was made possible through the prestige of its president, the politician and professor Pier Silverio Leicht, and through the General Direction of Academies and Libraries, that controlled the library sector and limited as much as possible any political and ideological interference.
The directors of state libraries who were not in favour of fascism usually remained in their positions, but in the 1930s the membership card of the National Fascist party became necessary for civil servants and some anti-fascist librarians lost their posts. Among these were Pietro Zorzanello, director of the Palatine Library of Parma, in 1934 and Anita Mondolfo, director of the National Library of Florence, in 1937. Jewish librarians were dismissed by the State in 1938. Many anti-fascist librarians preferred to take out a membership card of the National Fascist Party and remain in their positions, where they were able to work for libraries and, from the end of the 1930s, for their protection from the risks and dangers of the war.
From 1934 it became obligatory to wear a black shirt, the uniform of the Fascist Party, in the national conferences of the Italian Library Association, but photographs of the convention hall in 1934 and 1940 show that only a few librarians wore it. A number wore the uniform of the civil service, introduced in 1938, but the majority continued to wear their own civilian clothes. The fascistization of the library world was above all bureaucratic and ritual, imposed from the outside but limited to official speeches in congresses and on the Ministry journal. It did not leave much of a mark on the culture of the librarians, who sought to counter it in a veiled manner or at least to ignore it.