17 Facts About Mario Pannunzio

Mario Pannunzio was an Italian journalist and politician.

Mario Pannunzio was born in Lucca, a prosperous Tuscan city a short distance inland to the north of Pisa.

Mario Pannunzio was the second son of Guglielmo Pannunzio, a lawyer of strong communist proclivities originally from the Abruzzo region.

When Mario was 10 his father fell foul of the local Fascists and the family were obliged to relocate, ending up in Rome which is where Mario completed his schooling at the prestigious liceo classico Mamiani.

Mario Pannunzio got to know Attilio Riccio, formerly a fellow law student, who introduced him to this new milieu, and joined the editorial team of "Il Saggiatore", a short-lived left-field cultural magazine which had originated as a student publication.

Mario Pannunzio contributed reviews and articles in which he discussed the general characteristics and purpose of the novel.

Mario Pannunzio switched to journalism in 1937 invited, with Arrigo Benedetti to join the editorial team on "Omnibus".

Mario Pannunzio chose to use the title of his earlier short-lived publication, "Oggi".

Mario Pannunzio did not hesitate to oppose the National Liberation Committee, a broad coalition of political groupings united only by opposition to Fascism and, until the general election of June 1946, the closest thing occupied post-war Italy had to a government.

Mario Pannunzio was particularly critical of the CLN's muted response to the Foibe massacres, ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia and over the issue of Italian prisoners still held in the Soviet Union after the end of the war.

For Mario Pannunzio anti-Stalinism went hand in had with anti-Fascism, a political viewpoint that was far from mainstream on the Italian left, and not universal among many in the political centre.

Mario Pannunzio now received separate offers from the journalist turned media magnate Gianni Mazzocchi and from the Rizzoli-Corriere della Sera group to take on leadership of a new magazine.

Mario Pannunzio took on "political editorship" work at the magazine's Rome office.

Mario Pannunzio himself had been imprisoned during the German occupation for "antifascist resistance" between October 1943 and February 1944, after which it was he who had taken on leadership of the Risorgimento Liberale, the daily newspaper which, it could be argued, had defined postwar Italian liberalism between 1943 and 1948.

Mario Pannunzio set about obtaining and photocopying articles from the weekly magazine "Oggi" covering the years from 1939 to 1943, in order to find material that he might use to challenge Pannunzio's own anti-fascist credentials.

When Mario Pannunzio discovered that Rossi was in the process of building up a personal dossier on him, the break between the two former friends was complete.

Mario Pannunzio died in Rome, supported by his wife, on 10 February 1968.