18 Facts About Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli founded a vast library of documents mainly in the history of international labour and socialist movements.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was born in 1926 into one of Italy's wealthiest families, perhaps originating in Feltre.

In 1940, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli's mother married Luigi Barzini, editor of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

The young Giangiacomo Feltrinelli first took an interest in the living conditions of the poor and working class during discussions with the staff who ran his family's estate.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli came to believe that under capitalism most people could never attain his privileges and were compelled to sell their labour for a pittance to industrialists and landowners.

The Library later became an Institute; later still the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation, possessing some 200,000 rare and modern books, extensive collections of newspapers and periodicals, and over a million primary source materials.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore scored another coup in 1958 when it published a book rejected by every other significant Italian publisher: The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

Whatever his own reading tastes, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was always keen to promote the avant-garde, including the works of the influential literary circle Group 63.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli took the risk of publishing and distributing novels banned under Italian obscenity laws, such as Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.

In 1960, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli married German photographer Inge Schonthal, who gave birth to a son named Carlo.

However, in 1947 the PSI was engulfed in crisis following the departure of sections of its moderate wing, prompting Giangiacomo Feltrinelli to rejoin the PCI instead.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli remained a member of the party until 1958, when he left in solidarity with 'revisionist' criticism of the Hungarian Uprising and because of certain conflicts that had emerged within the PCI regarding his publishing house's editorial policy, although he continued to maintain friendly relations with several of the party's leaders.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli spent the 1960s travelling the world and making links with various radical Third World leaders and guerrilla movements.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli published the writings of figures such as Castro, Che and Ho Chi Minh, and a series of pamphlets on the unfolding insurgencies and wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was a close friend of the student leader Rudi Dutschke, whom he invited to convalesce in Italy after Dutschke was seriously wounded by an assassination attempt.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli gave financial support to the Palestine Liberation Front, among other causes.

In 1968, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli went to Sardinia to make contact with left-wing and separatist groups on the island, intending to make Sardinia a socialist republic similar to Cuba and "liberate it from colonialism".

On 15 March 1972, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was found dead at the foot of an electricity pylon at Segrate, near Milan, apparently killed by an explosive device he and other GAP members were planting the day before.