236 History Workshop Journal

Feltrinelli Library in Milan threatened

with closure
by Sergio Bologna

Since June 1990, the library and the archive of the 'Gian Giacomo Feltrinelli'

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Foundation in Milan has been closed. With its 220,000 books, its series of journals
and its archives, the Foundation is the biggest collection of sources for the history of
the European workers' movement.
The Feltrinelli library was founded in 1949 by Gian Giacomo, then aged 23, who
came from a rich timber-trading family. He wanted to create a library which would
offer a critical alternative to the then current way of writing history, still deeply
influenced by Stalinist party models. It was no accident that people like Gianni
Bosio, the founder of the 'history from below' movement in Italy, and Theo Pinkus,
the Swiss second-hand book seller who died not long ago, were amongst the first to
help realize the project of a library designed neither for specialists nor for
bureaucrats. From the mid 1950s until the early 1960s, a group of young historians
and economists undertook the task of building up good scholarly collections of
library and archive material. They were mainly drawn from the left wing of the
Italian Socialist party (Partito Socialista Italiano). Amongst them were such
international experts on the history of contemporary Germany and the Third Reich
as Enzo Collotti. The Institute and Library 'G. G. Feltrinelli' became a centre of
study not only of the workers' movement but also of the period of the Enlightenment
and of the Italian Risorgimento.
The foundation's journal Movimento Operaio, published by Stefano Merli,
inspired a whole new generation of historical research. Several years after the
founding of the library, the Feltrinelli publishing house was established which
achieved international renown when it became the first to publish Pasternak's Doctor
Zhivago. With the rise of the new left in the early 1960s and the growth of liberation
movements in the so-called third world, the library began systematically to collect
material in these areas. This section of the library became particularly important
after 1968. In this way the library and the archive became one of the most significant
collections of material on the history of new left movements generally. Gian
Giacomo Feltrinelli died in 1972 in the aftermath of a bomb attack, but his closest
associates continued to further his cultural and political aims both in the publishing
house and in the library.
The break came in 1980-81, when the heirs of Feltrinelli who now owned the press
abandoned its original political goals. As a result, many of those who had worked in
the press left. Whole series of left wing books which had given the press its particular
stamp in the 1970s were deleted from the catalogue and pulped. The library and the
foundation continued to exist, but gradually their funding from the Feltrinelli heirs
and from the institutions of the workers' movement dried up. In 1985 Professor
Salvatore Veca was appointed as the new head of the foundation: he, however, is not
a historian, but a fashionable philosopher.
 Stop Press 237

Hardly any new acquisitions were made, some periodicals were cancelled, and the
collections of the new left were no longer cared for as an archive. Instead the material
was packed up into boxes and outhoused, and much of it has simply become unusable
as a result of weather damage and neglect. The long-standing head of the library,
Enzo Sellino, tried to counteract this trend, but he was transferred in 1986. Although
a Milanese bank had given generous financial subsidies for a catalogue of the library's
holdings done to international standards, this work was hardly begun when it was
broken off.
The excuse for the closure of the library in June 1990 was 'reorganization of the
archive' - but this did not take place. Instead the collections were transferred to a
storage depot on the outskirts of Milan. In April 1991, out offivelibrarians, the three

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whose work had involved dealing with the public were sacked. At this point, a group
of historians finally intervened, Stefano Merli amongst them. They published an
appeal in the press drawing attention to the threatened closure of the library.
Professor Veca blamed the 'public institutions' and their failure to grant more
money. He has a point, but it is the Feltrinelli family itself which no longer has any
interest in the continued existence of the library and archive. According to the
financial report of 1989, the subsidy granted by Carlo Feltrinelli, son of G. G.
Feltrinelli and co-owner of the press, did not even cover half the telephone bill.
Now at last there are widespread protests, not only from academics, but from
those personally affected, such as political activists who had donated their personal
collections to the archive, or students who (unlike in other archives) enjoyed direct
access to the material, and foreign researchers who were only able to find material
relating to the history of their own countries in the Feltrinelli Library. For instance,
the US historian Bob Harmon travelled to Milan in May 1991 to work on an
American periodical, a complete run of which is only available in the Feltrinelli
library, not in the US! 'I am outraged and disappointed', Harmon said on Radio
Popolare Milan. 'In 1983 I was able to do six months of intensive research thanks to
the assistance of the library and archive staff. Now I stand in front of closed doors,
and I can't find out when or if the library will ever be opened. The staff who worked
there, some of them political refugees, have been sacked and are now unemployed.'
In the same programme it was reported that the University of Ferrara had decided to
confer an honourary doctorate on Mrs Inge Feltrinelli on 21 June 1991 'for special
services to culture'.