alcide de gasperi

Alcide De Gasperi (born 3 April 1881 in Pieve Tesino in the Province of Trento, Austria-Hungary part of Italy; died 19 August 1954 in Sella di Valsugana in the same province) was an Italian statesman and politician. He is considered to be one of the Founding Fathers of the European communities, along with the Frenchman Robert Schuman and the German Konrad Adenauer. De Gasperi studied philosophy and literature in Vienna, and afterwards he became a journalist. In 1911 he became a Member of Parliament in the Austrian Reichsrat. In 1919 he was one the founders, with Don Luigi Sturzo, of the Popular Party, or Partito Popolare; starting in 1921 he was an MP for the party. He later became party leader and Secretary-General. De Gasperi served a 16-month jail sentence as an anti-fascist. After his release in 1931 he worked in the library of the Vatican; there, in 1943 during the Second World War, he organized the establishment of the first (and at the time, illegal) Christian Democracy party, or Democrazia Cristiana, drawing upon the ideology of the Popular Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive Christian Democratic governments. His eight-years of rule remain a landmark of political longevity for one leader in modern Italian politics. In 1952 he received the Karlspreis (engl.: International Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen), an Award by the German city of Aachen to people who contributed to the European idea and European peace.

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