Ada Gobetti Marchesini (1902–1968)

Ada Gobetti Marchesini, née Prospero, was born in Turin. Her parents were Giacomo Prospero, a Swiss fruit merchant who emigrated to Italy, and his Italian wife Olimpia Biacchi. While still a high school student, she began contributing to magazines such as Energie Nove, La Rivoluzione Liberale, and Il Baretti. In 1923, she married publisher and journalist Piero Gobetti, with whom she had a son, Paolo. The couple were both dedicated anti-Fascists and their home was the center of a clandestine network of intellectuals who would later establish the anti-Fascist resistance movement Giustizia e Libertà. In 1925, she earned a degree in philosophy and began teaching. The following year, her husband was savagely beaten by Fascists and forced to give up his business and emigrate to Paris, where he died. Over the next years, Ada strengthened her friendship with Benedetto Croce, who encouraged her to begin doing translations from English. She introduced Italians to the works of Dr. Benjamin Spock and other English, American, Russian and French writers. In 1937, she remarried to Ettore Marchesini. She was among the founders of the liberal-socialist Partito d'Azione (Action Party) in 1942. During World War II, she was a leader of the Italian Resistance, coordinating the partisan brigades, in which her son was active, and keeping safe houses. After the war, she became the first woman appointed deputy mayor of Turin, a position she held until 1946. In the 1950s, she wrote for many liberal, left-wing, and Communist publications and co-edited the magazine Educazione Democratica. During the war, she had kept a diary, which was the basis for her autobiography, published in 1956 as Diario Partigiano (Partisan Diary). Together with her son, daughter-in-law, and Norberto Bobbio, she created the Centro Studi Piero Gobetti (Piero Gobetti Study Center) in Turin, a cultural institute dedicated to the study of history and political thought of the 20th century.