Eugenio Colorni
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eugenio Colorni (22 April 1909 – 28 May 1944) was an Italian philosopher and anti-fascist activist.[1]
Born in Milan on 22 April 1909,[1][2] Colorni taught philosophy at the University of Trieste, and was active in the anti-fascist Giustizia e Libertà movement. Colorni was one of the promoters of the Ventotene Manifesto and an early instigator of the European Federalist Movement. In the mid-1930s, he was closely associated with Lelio Basso and others. On 9 September 1938 he and Dino Philipson were arrested in Trieste for their anti-fascist political activity and their Jewish background.[3][4] He was imprisoned in the Ventotene prison,[4] then transferred to Melfi.[5] He escaped to Rome in the spring of 1943, where he edited and released the Ventotene Manifesto through the socialist underground newspaper Avanti!,[6] but he was killed in Rome by a Nazi ambush on the Piazza Bologna on 28 May 1944, one week before the Allies arrived.[1][7]
He married Ursula Hirschmann in 1935,[8] and was an important influence on her brother Albert O. Hirschman,[9] who dedicated his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty to Colorni's memory.[10] He had three daughters by Ursula: Silvia, Renata, and Eva. His youngest daughter Eva married Indian economist Amartya Sen in 1978 and produced two children prior to her death seven years later.
