Provenance Tancredi Achille Giuseppe Olimpio Galimberti was the younger by two years of his parents' two sons. He was born and spent a contented childhood in
Centallo, a small
Piedmontese town a short distance to the north of the
province capital,
Cuneo, positioned between the cities of
Genoa to the south and
Turin to the north. His father,
Lorenzo Tancredi Galimberti (1856–1939), was a lawyer-politician who served as
Minister for Postal and Telegraphic communications in the
Zanardelli government between 1901 and 1903 and was later, in 1929, appointed to
the senate. His mother, born
Alice Schanzer, came originally from Vienna: she is frequently identified in Italian language sources not by her married name but simply by her
birth name, which is at least in part a tribute to her own eminence as a poet and literary scholar. Despite the impressive quartet of given names with which he was provided at baptism, Galimberti was almost universally known both throughout his life and after his death by the affectionate diminutive "Duccio". An exception was the name by which
anti-fascist resistance comrades identified him during the 1940s. Partisan pseudonyms were commonly used to confuse the fascist authorities, and sources dealing with that part of Duccio Galimberti's life may also refer to him as "Professor Garnera". The essay consists of a careful in-depth analysis of Mazzini's entire political doctrine, in the course of which the writer does not omit to draw attention to the elements of uncertainty and utopianism in Mazzini's concept of the state. dealt with "Levels of danger as a determinant of Criminal Sanctions".
Not a fascist Following graduation, Galimberti was called up for an initial period of
military service. University graduates normally embarked on their military service with the rank of an army officer, but that would have involved enrolling in a special course which might have been construed as some form of personal endorsement of the
Mussolini government. It might have meant becoming a
party member. Slightly unusually, given his background, Duccio Galimberti undertook his military service in 1926 as a
simple "private" conscript. The authors' prescriptions were infused with
Pan-Europeanism. This, together with Galimberti's conscious originality in the context of the progressive "Mazzinianism" that was mainstream among resistance intellectuals, is apparent from the many qualifying phrases incorporated: "... very remote from the position taken by the
'Action Party', whether with respect to its 'seven-points' or its 'sixteen points' – that is, from both of its [two distinctive] souls". There is a spirit of nineteenth century
Liberalism or even, at times, of the
Dirigisme associated with
republicans and
liberals such as
Ugo La Malfa,
Ferruccio Parri or even certain politically restless
socialists such as
Emilio Lussu,
Francesco De Martino and
Tristano Codignola.
The fall of Fascism In Rome the
Grand Council of Fascism held its final meeting on 24 July 1943.
Tunis had fallen. There were clear indications that
Anglo-American forces, fresh from their
African desert victory and already
advancing across Sicily, were preparing to
invade mainland Italy from the south. The Grand Council meeting in Rome was a crisis meeting, which ran through the night, and culminated in an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the leader. In the morning
the king met
the leader and informed him that
Marshal Badoglio would take over as leader of the government. Mussolini's arrest followed, as he left the meeting. The fall of fascism was followed by a rapid further transformation in Duccio Galimberti's approach. On the morning of 26 July 1943 he appeared on the first floor balcony of his studio-office, which overlooked the main
"Piazza Vittorio" (square) in Cuneo and addressed a crowd made jubilant by news of the dictator's fall.
To the mountains Overnight on 11 / 12 September 1943 Duccio Galimberti,
Dante Livio Bianco and ten other friends made their way up into the mountains of the
Valle Gesso, directly to the south of
Cuneo. A week later the recently dismissed was installed as the leader of the
Italian Social Republic German puppet state in northern Italy, the territorial extent of which was progressively reduced, from the south.
Piedmont, which included the Cuneo region in which the
"Justice and Freedom brigades" operated, was therefore part of
the fought over puppet state. Meanwhile, Galimberti's group soon moved on from their chapel base to Paralup near
Rittana and then on again to the San Matteo in the mountains above the
Valle Grana, where they set up what became a more permanent partisan base during November 1943. Towards the end of 1943 Galimberti engaged in the careful but vital work of connecting and unifying the various little partisan bands that had responded to his call and to the needs of the moment. By the end of 1943 the
"Justice and Freedom brigades" had become a reality in the Cuneo region. He took care to be involved personally in the recruitment of new fighters and in very critically scrutinizing the "moral worth" of new arrivals. There was a continuing risk that there would be fascist informers among them. He was taken to
"Le Nuove", Turin's imposing nineteenth century prison complex. There followed frantic attempts by resistance comrades to negotiate his release in return for German prisoners, of whom by this stage the partisans had captured a considerable number, but the attempts proved unproductive. From the point of view of his captors, it seemed, Duccio Galimberti was beyond price.
Murder Early in the morning of 3 December 1944, following a second night of brutal interrogation, Galimberti was taken in the back of a truck along the main road to the north (
SS20), apparently back to
Turin. Less than ten kilometers north of Cuneo the truck stopped, however, and Galimberti was pushed out, landing across or in the ditch by the road. By the lane leading to the hamlet of Tetto Croce, he was shot in the back with one or more machine-gun bursts. His dead body was left where it fell. == Notes ==