Turin, donated to the Polo del '900 the archive of Leone Ginzburg

The Polo del ’900 Foundation is acquiring the letters, manuscripts and documents ofLeone Ginzburg’s archive, until now kept by the family. The archive, which is currently being reorganized, thus returns to Turin, and from here initiatives and projects related to the memory of one of the most important protagonists of Italian culture in the 1930s will begin.

Born in Odessa into a cosmopolitan family, Leone stopped in Turin in 1924. At the Massimo D’Azeglio High School, his classmates included Sion Segre Amar, Giorgio Agosti and Norberto Bobbio; among the teachers were Ugo Cosmo, Zino Zini, Franco Antonicelli and Augusto Monti, with whom he met, consolidating cultural relationships destined to translate into political action. Fundamental are friends at the university including Cesare Pavese, Massimo Mila, Vittorio Foa, with whom he joined the underground anti-fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà. There is also Giulio Einaudi among his friends with whom he starts the historic Turin publishing house of which he is in fact the first editorial director. In the same city at Carlo Levi’s house he meets his future wife Natalia Levi. Turin is also the city from which Leone is forced to leave several times. Arrested the first time in 1934, he was released in 1936 as a special vigilante and later sent to confinement at Pizzoli in Abruzzo. Freed in 1943 at the fall of fascism, he is one of the animators of the Resistance in Rome. Captured again and imprisoned at Regina Coeli, he is tortured by the Germans until his death at only 35 after a short and extraordinary life devoted to defending freedom of association, press and thought against the regime.

“From the very first conversation with Alberto Sinigaglia and Emiliano Paoletti, my sister Alessandra and I had no doubts about the decision to be made: our father’s papers should be preserved in Turin, and the Polo del ’900 was the ideal institution to do so. Leone Ginzburg’s deep ties with this city are well known: the nickname his friends had given him (’the Russian of Turin’) is eloquent,” says Professor Carlo Ginzburg, Leone’s son. "Very substantial, and irreplaceable, is the correspondence between Leone Ginzburg and Natalia Levi, before and after their marriage, sent between 1934 and 1940. Other letters are addressed to his friends, to well-known figures such as Benedetto Croce. The documents also include a notebook from 1921 and an unpublished novella from 1925 that will shed some light on Leone Ginzburg’s astonishing intellectual precocity," he added.

“We welcome the Leone Ginzburg Archive with affection and gratitude: it is a sign of trust on the part of Carlo Ginzburg and his family for the Polo del ’900 and the twenty-five institutions that are part of it. And it is a great gift for Turin, a city of culture and critical thinking,” concluded Polo President Alberto Sinigaglia.

Pictured is Leone Ginzburg in 1936.

Turin, donated to the Polo del '900 the archive of Leone Ginzburg

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