Paolo Emilio Taviani

Taviani appeared for the last time on the Italian political stage on 30 May 2001, when he presided as senior member of the Senate’s inaugural session. A few days later he suffered a stroke and died in Rome in the early morning of 18 June. His memoirs came out a few weeks later: Politica a memoria d’uomo. He is buried in Bávari.

From 1963 he was President of Italian Federation of Volunteers for Freedom (FIVL). In 1987 he was appointed President of the Historical Museum of the Liberation of Rome "Via Tasso". On 25 April 1994, he gave a passionate speech in defence of the values of the Resistance during a large demonstration which was strongly opposed by supporters of the Centre-Right coalition. In 2001 Taviani celebrated the first Memorial Day in Italy remembering the mass extermination of Jews at the "Via Tasso" Museum.

From the second half of the 1980s Taviani was president of the Scientific Committee for the "Nuova Raccolta Colombiana" (22 works by the most important scholars from Italy and abroad) and he also took part in organising celebrations marking the 500th Anniversary of the Columbus’ discoveries in 1992. His definitive work on the subject appeared in 1996 which summarised and updated all the previous works: Christopher Columbus (three volumes published by the Italian Geographic Society).

From 1976 to 1987 Taviani was elected senator of the Italian Republic in Liguria. From 1979 he was President of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1991 he was appointed “Senator for Life” for “social, literary and scholarly merit”. After the dissolution of the Christian Democratic Party Taviani became a member of the new Italian People's Party (in the Centre-Left coalition). In one of his final interviews he expressed the hope that the PPI would join the European social democratic group.

After the coup d’état in Chile, Taviani recognised the change that took place in the Italian Communist Party under Enrico Berlinguer. During his final period as Minister of the Interior he expressed appreciation of the aid the PCI provided in countering illegal armed organisations (both from the Right and Left wings). By the end of 1974 Taviani’s position within the Christian Democratic Party had become difficult because many felt he was too far to the Left. Taviani refused offers to compromise and thereafter only accepted institutional appointments but never again took up a post in the government.

Taviani taught the History of Economic Doctrines at the University of Genoa from 1961 to 1986. From 1950 to 1995 Taviani was editor of the journal Civitas which dealt with topics related to economics, contemporary history and international politics.

In the early 1960s Taviani favoured an alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Socialist Party in the regional government of Liguria which he later supported for years in national governments. In 1964 he firmly refused to accept a proposal by Italy’s President Antonio Segni to head an emergency government as an authoritarian crack down on the communists. In the years that followed Taviani was severely criticised by supporters of the political Right.

From 1953 until 1974 Taviani was minister in every one of Italy’s governments. As Minister of the Interior he was active in the struggle against the mafia and effectively countered both the Neo-Fascists (in 1973 he outlawed the extreme Right wing organisation Ordine Nuovo) and the Red Brigades (in September 1974 were arrested the leaders of the organization R. Curcio and A. Franceschini). Taviani managed to survive the “death sentences” imposed on him by the OAS, the ON and the BR.

Undersecretary to De Gasperi at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1951), later Minister for Foreign Trade (1953), then again Minister of Defence (from 1953 to 1958), Taviani supported the choice to enter the Atlantic alliance, though always from a pro-European perspective. He was one of the most stubborn supporters of the ECSC, the EEC and finally the European Union. As Defence Minister he favoured the re-entry of the Federal Republic of Germany into the western Alliance.

Immediately after the war, Taviani became involved in the task of transforming the monarchy into a republic. Appointed to the Consulta he was later elected to the Constituent Council where he drafted the articles regarding property in the Constitution of the Italian Republic (arts. 41-45 in the final text). In the elections from 1948 to 1976 Taviani always managed to obtain the most votes among the deputies elected from Liguria. From 1947 to 1950 he was first Vice-secretary, then National Political Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party. In the party he always supported the secular basis that De Gasperi had wanted. In 1950 Taviani was head of the Italian delegation in Paris for the Schumann Plan, the first major step towards a united Europe.

Immediately after 8 September, under the pseudonym of Riccardo Pittaluga, Taviani founded the Committee for National Liberation in Liguria (CLNL) as representative of the Christian Democracy. His clandestine activities often brought him among the partisans in the mountains (it was in these years that he became close friends with the commanders Aldo Gastaldi, "Bisagno" and Aurelio Ferrando, "Scrivia"). Taviani maintained contacts with Allied military missions that had parachuted behind enemy lines. He was also editor of La Voce d'Italia a banned periodical published by the Resistance in Liguria. Within the CLNL Taviani often argued the need for a single military command that could effectively coordinate the efforts of volunteers from so many different political backgrounds. On the night of 23 April 1945 the CLNL assumed the leadership of the insurrection in Genoa. On the evening of 25 April the German commander surrendered to representatives of the CLNL. The next morning it was Taviani who announced that the city had been liberated in a radio address broadcast by the BBC: "Genoa is free. People of Genoa, rejoice! For the first time in the history of this war a military unit has surrendered to the spontaneous forces of a people: the people of Genoa!" For his activity in the Resistance Taviani would later receive the Gold Medal for Merit in War in Italy, Gold medals for Merit in the United States and the Soviet Union, the title of Grand Official of the Légion d'Honneur in France. Taviani wrote about the Resistance in the Breve storia dell’insurrezione di Genova, in the collection of short stories Pittaluga Racconta as well as in dozens of articles. His early years in the Resistance marked Taviani's entire political career.

Already in secondary school Taviani joined the catholic group that was most sensitive to social issues. At university he became head of the Genoese branch of FUCI (Federazione Universitaria dei Cattolici Italiani). Following the Lateran Pacts, Taviani, a young man at the time, shared in the illusion that Fascism might one day evolve into a movement for social justice inspired by Catholic values. Consequently, at the age of 18 he joined the PNF. But the fascists’ belligerent policies and, above all, the racial laws of 1938 shattered that illusion. By the eve of the war, Taviani was firmly in the camp of the anti-fascists. On 27 July 1943 just before the fall of the regime, Taviani founded in Liguria the section of the “Partito-Cristiano-Sociale Democratico” (later Christian Democracy, DC) bringing together young people from the Christian Social Movement with the older members of the People's Party.

In January 1941 Taviani married Vittoria Festa whom he had met at the University of Genoa: after more than sixty years of marriage they had eight children and twenty grandchildren.

Taviani’s first publications on Christopher Columbus date back to 1932. But it was in the second half of the 1970s that research on Columbus absorbed a large part of his time. Taviani has left approximately 200 publications on Christopher Columbus (these have been translated English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, Vietnamese, etc.).). There are two major works: Christopher Columbus. The grand design (1974, ing. ed. 1985) and The voyages of Columbus (1984, ing. ed. 1991). Taviani wrote them by combining a study of primary and secondary sources with a direct geographic analysis of all the places Columbus reached. Taviani compared the various interpretations, pointed out those that were most reliable, provided some new insights and left the field open to further hypotheses whenever it was not possible to overcome any reasonable doubt. He dialogued with scholars from Italy and abroad and managed to achieve a nearly unanimous consensus on a few firm points of historiography.

Paolo Emilio Taviani (6 November 1912 – 18 June 2001) was an Italian political leader, economist, and historian of the career of Christopher Columbus. He was a partisan leader in Liguria, a Gold Medal of the Resistance, then a member of the Consulta (National Assembly gathered to direct the transformation of the monarchy into a Republic) and the Constituent Council, later of the Italian Parliament from 1948 until his death. Several times minister in the Republic’s governments. He was author of studies on economics and important works on Christopher Columbus, University professor and journalist.

Taviani was born in Genoa on 6 November 1912. His mother, Elide Banchelli, was an elementary school teacher. His father, Ferdinando, was a headmaster and one of the founders of the Genoese section of the Italian People's Party (1919). After graduating from the Classical “Liceo”, Taviani went on to university where he earned a law degree in 1934. The same year he obtained his journalist’s license and began working for various Catholic oriented newspapers. In 1936 he obtained a second degree in social sciences from the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa ( Collegio Mussolini i.e. present day Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) and in 1939 he earned a third degree in Letters and Philosophy from the Catholic University of Milan. The next year he was professor of History and Philosophy in the public “Licei” as well as assistant lecturer in Geography at the University of Genoa. From 1943 he was professor of Demographics in the Faculty of Law in Genoa.