President Sergio Mattarella on
Thursday remembered Indro Montanelli on the 20th anniversary of
the death of the dean of Italian journalism.
"Remembering Indro Montanelli, 20 years on from his death, still
arouses intense emotion, not only in those who knew him best but
also in the many who appreciated his qualities as journalist,
narrator, history populariser and polemicist who did not forgo
strong tones even at the risk of disorienting his admirers,"
said Mattarella of the journalist, historian and writer who was
a beacon for liberal conservatives in Italy and a model for
aspiring writers.
"Indro Montanelli's journalism traversed much of the 20th
century. Having started his activity during the Fascist regime,
he was war correspondent and distinguished himself in those
years for the way in which he rounded out his work, ducking as
far as possible the tight restrictions of propaganda.
"Having become critical towards Fascism, he was impriosned in
Milan in the last period of the Second World War. Having escaped
from prison he reached Switzerland, where he awaited the end of
the conflict.
"The Italian Republic saw his commitment as journalist and
writer intensify. He was one of the most prestigious names of
Corriere della Sera. He founded Il Giornale and then La Voce. He
chose new roads every time he saw, or f eared, invasions of the
field or limitations to his autonomy.
"The Red Brigades identified him as a target, and the attack
that wounded him was a crime against the freedom of information.
"He refused with stubbornness any pigeon-holing, claiming it due
to his Tuscan character.
"An intellectual of inexhaustible energy, a master of writing,
an intransigent journalist in defence of professional autonomy,
he was for decades a high-profile personality in Italian culture
and public debate".
Montanelli died on July 22, 2001 at the age of 92.
Perhaps the most famous Italian journalist and the last
example of the old-style hard-bitten reporter of the old-school
who can still mix gritty story-telling with historical
background and literary touches, Montanelli was also famous for
being that Tuscan type: the contrarian.
A Tuscan by birth but Milanese by choice, he was born on
April 22 1909 in Fucecchio, a small town between Pisa and
Florence.
After earning two degrees, one in law and the other in
political science, he went to Paris, frequented the Sorbonne and
got a job on Paris Soir where he worked fro a couple of years as
a court and hospital reporter.
In 1935, just into his 20s, he decided to join the Italian
expedition in Abyssinia. At the time Montanelli was a supporter
of Fascism but would later denounce the regime.
As soon as he got to Eritrea, he bought a 14-year-old girl
who accompanied him throughout the campaign. He later described
her as "my famous African wife." She was later chosen by General
Porzio Biroli to be part of his harem.
Montanelli's boastful description of this episode in his life
last year saw a Milan statue of him defaced with paint by
supporters of the #MeToo movement.
Despite his youth, Montanelli led a band of mercenaries on
scouting missions, flushing out enemies. He recounted his
adventures in a best-selling war diary.
But having seen the behaviour of the Fascist high-ups at
first hand, Montanelli ended the war embittered and
disillusioned with the party.
His war writings earned him the promise of a contract with
Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper. But in the
meantime he went off to Spain to cover the civil war for Roman
daily Il Messaggero and sent back a couple of reports which told
the truth, as ever, and cast the regime in an unflattering
light. He was expelled from the Fascist party, from the
journalists' guild and was sent by a sympathetic Fascist
cultural official to head the Italian institute of culture in
Estonia for a year.
On his return to Italy he got his journalist card back but
refused the Fascist card. In 1938 he got the promised job at
Corriere where he would remain for the next 40 years, writing
memorable pieces from all over the world.
He started in Albania, then Germany, then Finland and
Norway. In Rome he went to jail for anti-fascist crimes and was
sentenced to death but made a daring escape from the firing
squad.
His spell in jail prompted one of his best bhooks, General
Dalla Rovere, which became a film that won the top prize at the
Venice Film Festival.
In the last days of the war he fled to Switzerland.
After the war he returned to Corriere but initially only as
film critic - only to soon resume his role as roving worldwide
reporter.
He was among the first to get into Budapest during the 1956
uprising and wrote, against the prevalent Italian line, that
they were not bourgeois rebels but "antiStalinist Communists".
In the early '70s he became estranged by the radical chic
line the Corriere was taking and in 1974 founded his own
Giornale, later receiving precious financial help from
businessman Silvio Berlusconi.
In it he warned that student and worker rebellion might sow
the seeds of terrorism.
In 1977 he himself was attacked by the Red Brigades, who
kneecapped him. Il Giornale was a publishing success and became
a leading maverick conservative daily, in which Montanelli's had
a column, Controcorrente (Against The Tide, or just Maverick).
In 1978 Berlusconi bought 30% of the paper and over the
years to 1987 upped his stake to 70%, promising Montanelli
complete editorial freedom (in 1992, formal control passed to
Berlusconi's brother).
But when Berlusconi interfered with the paper's editorial
policy after the media magnate entered the political race in
1994, Montanelli left the paper he had founded and a few months
later set up a new one, La Voce.
After a promising start, the new venture foundered in
April 1995 and a year or so later Montanelli was called back to
Corriere to run a regular letters' slot and feature as a regular
ediorialist, still one of the most trenchant observers of the
Italian scene.
Upon his death, tributes to the master poured from politicians
of all stripes and Italy's leading journalists.
European Commission President Romano Prodi, later leader of the
centre left in Italy, said: "He passed through the history of
Europe as a free man."
Veteran journalist Enzo Biagi, a pretender to Montanelli's
crown, said: "Something has passed away from the history of
Italy."
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