GASPERI, ALCIDE DE

Italian statesman; b. Pieve Tesino (Trentino), Austria-Hungary, April 3, 1881; d. Sella, Italy, Aug. 19, 1954. After receiving his secondary education in Trent, he studied in the University of Vienna (1900–05), where he specialized in philosophy and philology. While there he devoted much time to organizing Catholic students and workers and instilling in them the principles of Leo XIII's social encyclical rerum novarum. After graduation he edited Il Trentino and made it the journal of the Popular party, which advocated Catholic solutions to socioeconomic problems and autonomy for the Trentino region. De Gasperi was elected to the Austrian Reichsrat in 1911. During World War I he supervised relief activities in the camps peopled with Italians who had been expelled from the Trentino by the Austrian authorities.

After Italy annexed the Trentino (1919), De Gasperi joined the Popular party of Don sturzo and was elected to the Italian parliament (1921). As an opponent of fascism, De Gasperi was arrested and charged with clandestine attempts at expatriation (1927). He received a four-year prison sentence, but illness and royal intervention effected his release (1928). From 1929 until 1943 he worked in the vatican library, first as a cataloguer and later (1939–43) as the secretary of the library. In 1942 he revived the Popular party, which was known henceforth as the Christian Democratic party. He was premier of Italy (Dec. 1945 to July 1953), the first practicing Catholic to hold the post. Communists and left-wing Socialists were part of his coalition cabinets until June 1947, but they were excluded thereafter and membership was restricted mostly to his own party. As premier De Gasperi supported industrial and agrarian reforms, continuation of the Lateran Pacts, alliance with the West, and European unity. He is buried in Rome in the Church of S. Lorenzo.

Bibliography: a. de gasperi, I Cattolici dall'opposizione al governo (Bari 1955). i. giordani, Alcide De Gasperi (Milan 1955). g. andreotti, De Gasperi e il suo tempo (Milan 1956). e. a. carrillo, A. De Gasperi (Notre Dame, Ind. 1965).

[e. a. carrillo]