The daughters of the Republic: di Fanfani, Cossiga, La Malfa

In the second, Anna Maria Cossiga, Luisa la Malfa, Rosa Russo Iervolino (the only one to talk about her mother, Maria De Unterrichter, a DC parliamentarian like her husband, Angelo Raffaele Jervolino), Rosa Giolitti and Marina Fanfani they open their album of memories revealing intimate details of pre-social political figures who, in fact, didn’t share a damn thing about the private sector.

They had voters, not followers. Once the rages and passions have passed, the defeats have been accepted, the rights and wrongs consigned to the history books, the gaze of the daughters remains, softened by time. The Moro case, a deep wound Maria Romana De Gasperi tells his parents who looked at the windows pretending to have money for shopping, Serena Andreotti memorable lunches with dad Giulio.

Anna Maria Cossiga the cardboard houses “with windows that opened and glass made of plastic.” Fragments that make these men consigned to politics less institutional, often distracted parents, husbands who required massive doses of patience.

Marina Fanfani, a difficult father

Marina Fanfani, third of seven children, brings up a family memory: her father’s first meeting with Alcide De Gasperi, practically a summons, on April 22, 1939 in Rome. «Too bad he was supposed to get married that day. So she told my mother: “Biancarosa, let’s change our plans. We have the reception on the evening of the 21st, the wedding on the 22nd at half past six in the morning, and at eight we take a train to Rome. So it was. Dad left mom at the hotel, and went to the appointment.

Around half past four, De Gasperi told him: “I know you’re getting married…”. And he: “I got married, at 6, this morning”. “Here in Rome?”. “No, in Milan”. “And where is his wife?” “In hotel”. “Go to her”. Mom was crying. It hadn’t been a great start as a marriage…». And to think that he really wanted it, he liked it right awayhad sent her the audacious note: “I see you as my life partner”, ignoring the fact that she was already engaged. He was one of those who didn’t take no for an answer, tenacious, inflexible: “If the appointment was at five past three, and one arrived at six minutes past three, he didn’t come in. In order not to risk it, everyone showed up half an hour earlier».

The author of the Art. 1 of the Constitution

Of this father with a difficult characterfive times president of the Senate, six presidents of the Council, nine ministers and two secretary of the Christian Democrats, Marina is proud because she wrote Article 1 of the Constitution (“Italy is a republic founded on work”), he launched the housing plan, he wanted compulsory schooling, he imagined a third way between socialism and capitalism.

He forgives him for being wrong, in 1974, thinking that the DC would win the referendum on divorce: «I was sure it would lose. She said to me: “You are silly”. And I: “You don’t walk among people”. The kidnapping of Aldo Moro devastated him. He was desperate. Dad was the only one who really wanted to save him, and in fact he was the only one who attended the strictly private funerals wanted by the family ».

The Moro case

The Moro case, which returns in all the testimonies, is a deep wound. Remember Luisa La Malfa, daughter of Ugo, secretary and then president of the Republican Party, deputy from 1948 until his death in 1979: «When they kidnapped Moro I told him:“You have to run, dad, you have to hide“. He answered: “My seat is in Parliament. We are the defenders of the state“.

During Moro’s imprisonment we walked together on the Aventine (it was his refuge in difficult moments) and he was tormented: maybe they can’t find it? When they killed him, everything ended, even the construction of the historic compromise. He was sorry, La Malfa. Being judged pessimistic because he spoke of sacrifices and was against the increase in public debt. Alighiero Noschese, a very popular imitator (like Maurizio Crozza today), had made him a speck of rigor.

Intellectuals lent to politics

«The Italians wanted the sixteenth century, the sea and holidays, not austerity, the unions considered him an enemy, and he was not. He had known poverty and had come out of it. When he was a student, he ate bread and dried figs in the evening. As a parliamentarian he had working hours, from eight to twelve and then from three-four to half past seven. Moro, on the other hand, arrived at midday».

Wasn’t a father very present, says Luisa, but then he became a loving grandfather: «He didn’t even know how I went to school. He caught me at the University, made me enter Elena Croce’s living room. There I met Giorgio Bassani, Tullio De Mauro, Stefano Rodotà, Marco Pannella, Luigi Spaventa, and the man who later became my husband. I’m grateful to him for that.”

Those were times of intellectuals lent to politics who claimed autonomy (Elio Vittorini left the PCI because he did not want to “play the pipe for the revolution”) and Antonio Giolitti, nephew of the statesman and philosopher Giovanni Giolittiis one of them. Partisan, communist deputy (he left after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in ’56) and then a socialist.

Daughter Rosa recalls the house full of books (whole cases arrived), the lunches with Italo Calvino and Giulio Einaudi, but above all the treasure hunt: «He organized it in the countryside, every summer. Eventually, after so many notes you came to a circle, you had to find the size of the radius and to do that you had to use a roll of toilet paper. And it is obvious that he had rehearsed!”

Antonio Giolitti, half salary to the party

It was a different world, even too sober. Enrico De Nicola, the first president of the Republic, also wore a turned-up coat at official ceremonies. And Giolitti could only afford a house in the suburbs. «At the time», recalls Rosa, «the PCI parliamentarians gave half their salary to the party. Dad bought an apartment together with other deputies in a building in the middle of the countryside, there were sheep, and the greatest attraction was seeing the trains go by. There were seven doors overlooking via Cristoforo Colombo, modest houses (today it would be unthinkable). Longo, Di Vittorio, Mattarella, Nenni, Almirante, Foa, politicians of the right and left, opponents and neighbors lived there».

In half an hour the podcast summarizes his political parable: the crisis with the socialists, the “low esteem” towards Craxi, the European period in Brussels, the rapprochement with the PCI, the exit from the scene. And there is a delightful anecdote that only Rosa could tell us: «Giorgio Napolitano, just elected head of state, on May 15, 2006, looked for my father, a retired gentleman with no assignments. When I entered the house, Dad was fanning himself on the sofa with excitement. They had called from Napolitano’s secretariat, asking if the president could visit him. “And what did you tell him?” “That we were out for lunch”. And I: “Are you crazy? Tell him there was a mistake”. In 1956 Napolitano was in favor of the Soviet Union, and somehow, meeting Papa, he recognized his position, agreed with him. He was happy that day.”

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