Amintore Fanfani

Biography

Amintore Fanfani was born in 1908 at Pieve Santo Stefano near Arezzo, the eldest of nine children of a lawyer. He graduated in economics from the Catholic University of Milan in 1930 and made his name as an economic historian with a study of Catholicism, Protestantism and capitalism. Under Mussolini he joined the Fascist party, wrote in support of corporatism and in 1938 signed the Manifesto of Race; after the armistice of 1943 he took refuge in Switzerland.

After the war he joined Christian Democracy as a protege of Alcide De Gasperi, sat in the Constituent Assembly and then the Chamber of Deputies, and served as minister of labour, of agriculture and of the interior. As party secretary from 1954 to 1959 he rebuilt the DC organisation, and he first became prime minister in January 1954, heading a cabinet that lasted 23 days.

Fanfani led five more governments, in 1958-59, 1960-63, 1982-83 and 1987. His governments of the early 1960s opened the way to cooperation with the Socialists and brought the nationalisation of electricity, a single compulsory middle school and more progressive taxation. He was foreign minister three times in the 1960s, presided over the UN General Assembly in 1965-66, and was president of the Senate in three spells between 1968 and 1987.

He failed twice to win the presidency of the Republic, in 1964 and 1971, and as party secretary again from 1973 led the unsuccessful campaign to repeal divorce in the 1974 referendum. Made a senator for life in 1972, he briefly acted as head of state in 1978, later served as interior and budget minister, backed the founding of the Italian People's Party in 1994 and died in Rome in 1999.