Humanity was in the air on Wednesday 10 May at the Sala Pirelli of the “Pirellone”, the Milanese skyscraper that is the seat of the Lombardy Region, thanks to the conference “Guido Gerosa. The man with the typewriter”, organised by the Provincial Committee of Milan of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia in collaboration with the Association of Fiumani Italiani nel Mondo – Free Municipality of Fiume in Exile and with the patronage of the Lombardy Region, the Federation of Associations of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian Exiles and the Municipality of Milan. Born in Fiume in 1933, Gerosa was one of the most important names in Italian journalism (La Notte, Epoca, The European e The day were the newspapers he collaborated with), especially as a foreign correspondent, even if his passion for cinema had initially led him to write film criticism.

The host was Carlo Borghetti, regional councilor and member of the office of the presidency of the Council, who not only recalled the commitment of the institution to the knowledge of the history of the eastern border, with particular reference to the school competition that is organized every year, but also brought the greetings of the Hon. Maria Pia Garaviglia, President of the National Association of Christian Partisans. Mauro Piazza then spoke on behalf of the Regional Council, recognizing the importance of the work of Gerosa, who was a symbol of authoritative journalism that was good for politics and which is missed.

The National President of the Anvgd, Renzo Codarin, thanked Claudio Giraldi and Annamaria Crasti (president and vice-president of the Anvgd Milan respectively) for their commitment in the realization of this event and subsequently recalled the fruitful synergy between the Lombardy Region and the associations of the Adriatic diaspora, starting from the school competition to arrive at today's event through the collaboration in the organization of the summer school of history of the eastern border for teachers at the Vittoriale. Again on behalf of the exiles, Franco Papetti recalled how the Afim - Lcfe he presided over undertook a path aimed at the rediscovery and valorization of the Fiume people who made themselves appreciated after the exodus, highlighting that Gerosa was the son of an officer of the Royal Army and of Egle Smoquina, belonging to one of the most important families of Fiume.

Caterina Spezzano, director of the Ministry of Education of Merit, then retraced the stages that have characterized the growth of the MIM Working Table - Associations of Istrian, Fiuman and Dalmatian Exiles, an organization born in the spirit of the law establishing the Day of Remembrance to broaden and deepen at school level the history of Adriatic Italianity and which has recently created the very important guidelines for teaching the Adriatic border.

Historian Gianni Oliva opened the speeches by acknowledging Gerosa's great merits as an author of well-documented, accurate and easy-to-read popular history works, thinking above all of the biographies of Charles V, Napoleon and the Sun King. Able to range over different subjects and eras, Gerosa had refined his broad preparation because he came from Fiume, "a frontier city, that is, at the centre of a vast area where languages, peoples and cultures intersect and not a border, which marks a clear division". After noting that 20 years ago a conference on Gerosa would have recognised his great professional merits, but would have overlooked his Fiume origins which were instead at the centre of the work of this meeting, Oliva then gave a quick but valuable overview of the events of Fiume in the twentieth century.

"I met Gerosa when he came to my student studio apartment - continued Giordano Bruno Guerri, President of the Il Vittoriale Foundation - to interview me about my first book, which was the development of my degree thesis on Bottai and fascist culture. He wanted to meet me, see how I lived and from our chat came an article in which he was the one who effectively structured questions and answers". Guerri, after admitting his disappointment at never having spoken to Gerosa about Fiume, a city to which he later dedicated a large part of his work and studies, wanted however to "dedicate to his memory the transfer, three years ago, of the body of Senator Gigante, thrown into a sinkhole by Tito's followers, to the Vittoriale in the ark that Gabriele d'Annunzio had prepared for him as for his other companions on the Fiume expedition".

The moderator of the meeting, the journalist Diego Zandel, born in a refugee camp in a family of exiles from Fiume, then recalled that after having abandoned Fiume in 1944 together with his grandparents due to the raging Anglo-American bombings that would then in effect destroy his house as well, Gerosa never returned to the banks of the Carnaro.

Antonio Ferrari, editorialist of the Corriere della Sera, began to outline the contours of Gerosa the journalist: «Despite the age difference, we were great friends, perhaps because we were similar – explained Ferrari – but I must admit that I spoke to him about Fiume only because a girl I had fallen in love with was from Fiume». Very well prepared, but without any mania for protagonism, Gerosa enjoyed the esteem of Enzo Biagi, who recognized something more in him than other journalists: «You could talk to him about everything, he was a real man, explosive in his frankness. In his articles he got to the point without formalisms and without making allowances for anyone».

Even Massimo Franco, political correspondent of the Courier, believed that being born in Fiume, a border town, allowed Gerosa to look at events from multiple points of view and to perceive the logic that was behind certain positions. «Guido knew how to listen a lot – Franco continued – and he had a voracious curiosity: there are no more prepared correspondents like him, because today sectoral specialization reigns supreme, which is often synonymous with superficiality. His experience as a senator in the socialist ranks at the end of the 1999s shows that Craxi also knew how to select people of great depth». After Zandel reiterated that Gerosa's cosmopolitanism stemmed precisely from the fact that he was born in Fiume («a city where even the most ignorant understood four languages» Papetti specified), Alberto Gerosa then traced a more intimate memory of his father: among the large audience that filled the room were his brother Mario and his mother Adelaide. "He spoke little of Fiume with us, only when he was close to death (in 26, ed.) did Dad express the desire to return. He traveled all over the world for work, but in the Yugoslavian area he went only once to Sarajevo and instead he went often to Trieste". And Gerosa was there also on 1954 October 1955, the day Trieste returned to Italy after the tragic events of the Second World War: that date is reported in the dedication that Biagio Marin made to him in a book of poems that he gave him. Moved by the sea of ​​tricolours that were waving that day, Gerosa would return to Trieste the following year to follow the arrival of the stage of the 13 Giro d'Italia that was supposed to celebrate the reunion of the Julian capital with Italy. "His love for cinema began when he assiduously attended the Cappuccini cinema in Fiume - his son still recalls - and in the XNUMXs he asked me to get him all the films he had seen in his youth on video in the United States". Having often gone to Fiume for work reasons, Alberto Gerosa looked for his father's places there, even though the bombings had actually razed to the ground the house in via XXX Ottobre XNUMX where the Smoquina family lived, as well as another illustrious citizen of Fiume, Leo Valiani.

Finally, a short documentary made by Simone Pontini for the Anvgd was screened, in which the professional memories of the journalist Massimo Fini are followed by other family testimonies provided by Gerosa's children: thus we discover that in his early articles Gerosa was one of the first to point out the rising star of Mina, some of whose songs form the soundtrack to the film in the reinterpretation of the Trieste musician Umberto Lupi.

Lorenzo Salimbeni 

The conference can be reviewed on the YouTube channel ANVGD Milan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzb5D0iMu_4