(b. Trento, 3 Apr. 1881; d. 18. Aug. 1954) Italian; Prime Minister 1945 – 53 De Gasperi was born in the village of Pieve Tesino in the province of Trento, at a time when though linguistically Italian it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a local police officer of limited financial means. De Gasperi was active in the Social Christian movement from 1896, and it was Catholic social organization which gave impetus to his politics rather than Italian nationalism, though he was briefly imprisoned by the Austrian authorities in 1904. He graduated in philology from the University of Vienna in 1905 and helped establish the Partito Popolare Trentino, for whom he was elected to the Austrian Parliament in 1911.

He was firmly neutralist during the First World War, which he spent in Vienna. When the Trentino province passed to Italy in the post-war settlement, he took Italian citizenship, and was a founder-member of the Partito Popolare led by Don Luigi Sturzo. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1921, he initially supported the participation of the Popolari in Mussolini's first government in October 1922, but was soon in conflict with the Fascists over constitutional changes to the powers of the executive and to the election system, and to Fascist violence against the constitutional parties. The Popolari split, and De Gasperi became secretary of the remaining anti-Fascist Popolari in May 1924. In November 1926, in a climate of overt violence and intimidation by the Fascists, his party was dissolved by order of the Ministry of the Interior. De Gasperi attempted to escape into exile and was arrested and imprisoned. After his release in May 1928, he was unemployed and in serious financial hardship, until in May 1929 his ecclesiastical contacts secured him a job as a cataloguer in the Vatican Library, where he spent the next fourteen years until the collapse of Fascism in July 1943.

Throughout this period he continued to write pseudonymously, but his most important work was "Ideas for reconstruction" (Idee ricostruttive), published in 1943, which amounted to a party programme for a new Christian Democrat Party. He was the first general secretary of the new party in 1944, and after a period as minister in the coalition governments under the allies he became Prime Minister for the first time in December 1945. He remained in office as Prime Minister in eight successive governments until August 1953. After a brief period as party secretary again, he retired from active politics in increasing ill-health and died in 1954.

De Gasperi's involvement in the post-war reconstruction was of critical importance for the future functioning of the new Italian state. During his period of office, Italy voted to become a republic (June 1946), the Peace Treaty was signed (February 1947), the Marshall Plan and other US support for Italy was agreed, the wartime coalition with the Communists and Socialists was ended (May 1947), the new constitution came into force (January 1948), the DC won a majority in the first parliamentary elections (April 1948), and Italy joined NATO (1949). In all of these the guiding hand of De Gasperi was evident. Though at times his control of the DC appeared almost complete, it was in fact the result of a careful balancing of different factions and interests, especially over relations with the Vatican, over social reform, and over foreign policy. The 1952 party congress overwhelmingly endorsed his authority over the government and over the party, but initiated the period of his decline, as he came under increasing criticism from the emerging left of the party. The main accusations against him were that he was too cautious in social and economic reform, that he stifled debate, and that he subordinated the party to the interests of government.

A gradualist and a firm believer in the importance of international alliances, he was a politician for whom the term "centrist" could have been coined. He was a good practical administrator and a deeply religious individual who hated dogmatism and anything that smacked to him of extremism. De Gasperi is often regarded as one of the few undoubted statesmen of the post-war Italian Republic.

The Italian statesman Alcide De Gasperi (1881-1954) was one of the founders of Italian democracy after World War II.

Alcide De Gasperi was born on April 3, 1881, at Pieve Tesino in Trentino, then controlled by Austria. As a young man, he became active in the Irredentist movement to bring Italian-speaking people still under Austrian jurisdiction into the kingdom of Italy. In 1906 he began publication of the polemical journal II Trentino. This brought him a good deal of attention, and in 1911 he was elected to the Austrian Parliament as deputy for Trentino, a post he held for 6 years.

De Gasperi then joined the new Catholic People's party (Partito Popolare Italiano), founded by the Catholic political leader Don Luigi Sturzo. Trentino became part of Italy following World War I, and De Gasperi served as a deputy in the Italian Parliament from 1921 to 1924. Hard work brought him a position of eminence, and when Don Sturzo was forced into exile in 1924, De Gasperi became general secretary of the party.

As Mussolini's hold on the Italian government grew stronger, the position of the party became ever more precarious, and in 1926 it was dissolved. De Gasperi was imprisoned but was released 3 years later when, amid the atmosphere of good feeling between Mussolini and the Vatican, the archbishop of Trent intervened on his behalf. De Gasperi found asylum and temporary peace in the Vatican, where he studied Catholic social doctrine.

During World War II De Gasperi became active in the underground and was one of the founders of the illegal Christian Democratic party (Democrazia Christiana). He also founded the newspaper Popolo. After the liberation of Italy in June 1944, he served as minister without portfolio and then as foreign minister; in December 1945 he became premier, a post he held until 1953. As chief of the Italian delegation at the World War II peace conference, he elicited concessions from the Allies that guaranteed Italian sovereignty.

After the formal end of the monarchy in June 1946, De Gasperi functioned as head of the Christian Democrats, the party that dominated Parliament for the next 8 years. As premier, he gave moderate guidance that kept a precarious balance, during this critical postwar period, between disparate elements within the party and the nation. By avoiding conflicts with the numerous Socialists and Communists, he managed with great delicacy to put Italian democracy on a firm foundation. Besides his successful negotiations with the Allied Powers, his most striking achievement in foreign policy was the agreement with Austria (September 1946) to establish the southern Tirol as an autonomous region.

When the Christian Democrats did not gain a majority in the elections of 1953, De Gasperi was unable to establish a workable Cabinet and was forced to resign as premier. The following year he also had to forgo the leadership of his party, and 2 months later, on Aug. 19, 1954, he died.

Further Reading

Sources on De Gasperi in English are scarce. Elisa A. Carrillo, Alcide de Gasperi: The Long Apprenticeship (1965), covers his early life through his entry into the Quirinale as premier. Consult Denis Mack Smith, Italy: A Modern History (1959), for the political picture. English translations of the works by Luigi Sturzo that are helpful are Church and State (1939), Italy and the Coming World (1945), and Italy and Fascism (1967).

For more information on Alcide De Gasperi, visit Britannica.com.

(älchē'dā dā gä'spārē) , 1881–1954, Italian premier and a founder of the Christian Democratic party. Born in the Trentino—then under Austria—he represented Italian irredentists in the Austrian parliament and after the transfer of the Trentino to Italy at the end of World War I served (1921–24) as a Catholic deputy in the Italian parliament. After 16 months of imprisonment as an anti-Fascist, De Gasperi received (1931) a position at the Vatican Library; there he organized during World War II the center-right Christian Democratic party. A successor in part to Luigi Sturzo's Popular party, the moderately conservative group derived its program from the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. After the Italian surrender in 1943 he held several cabinet posts. From 1945 to 1953 he was premier of eight successive coalition cabinets dominated by the Christian Democrats, and as such was the main architect of Italy's initial postwar, post-Fascist recovery. In 1947, De Gasperi excluded the Communists and left-wing Socialists from the government, and in 1948 his party won a major electoral victory. De Gasperi inaugurated land reform, championed close cooperation with the United States, and led Italy into the European Recovery Program and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)