Alcide De Gasperi

Biography

Alcide De Gasperi was born in 1881 at Pieve Tesino in Trentino, then part of Austria-Hungary. Active in Catholic social movements from his teens, he studied philology at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1905, and edited the Trento Catholic paper Il Trentino. From 1911 he sat in the Austrian parliament for the Trentino People's Party.

After Trentino passed to Italy he helped found the Italian People's Party, entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1921 and led the party's anti-fascist remnant from 1924. The fascists imprisoned him in 1927; after his release he found refuge as a cataloguer in the Vatican Library, where he worked until 1943.

During the war he organised the new Christian Democracy party and became its first secretary. He served as foreign minister and, from December 1945, as prime minister of eight successive coalition governments until 1953. In these years Italy became a republic, signed the 1947 peace treaty, settled South Tyrol's autonomy with Austria, joined NATO and the Marshall Plan, and won a decisive victory over the left in the 1948 election.

A founding figure of European integration, he took Italy into the European Coal and Steel Community and in 1954 became president of its Common Assembly. He died in August 1954 at Borgo Valsugana.