Today we publish the first part of a long reflection, in two episodes, on the death of Aldo Moro. Some questions and questions, still unanswered, raised by the case of the famous Italian statesman, politician and jurist among the founders of the Christian Democracy, born in 1916 and killed by the Red Brigades in 1978.
WHO WAS ALDO MORO
Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs in the fifth De Gasperi government (1948-49). President of the DC parliamentary group (1953-55), Minister of Justice in the Segni government, of Public Education in the Zoli and Fanfani governments, in February 1959 he was elected secretary of the DC. He led the party through the complex crisis of centrism to the opening to the socialists and the launch of the centre-left, with the prospect of the enlargement of the majority. Prime Minister from December 1963 to June 1968, Moro was at the head of three governments which saw the stabilization of the centre-left formula. Once again Prime Minister (November 1974 – July 1976), he resumed the line defined as “attention strategy” towards the communist party, then based on the perspective of the “historical compromise” and increasingly present in national political and civil life.
As president of the national council of the DC (from October 1976) he accentuated the role of mediation in Italian political life during the experience of the government of national solidarity known as “no distrust” (July 1976 – March 1978). The day of the launch of the fourth gover Andreotti, which concluded a long political crisis with the entry of the PCI into the majority (16 March 1978), Moro was kidnapped in Rome, in via Fani, by a commando of the Red Brigades who massacred the men of the escort.
Faced with the dramatic event, which was followed by the BR’s request for the release of prisoner Red Brigade members and for political recognition, the press and the political world were divided between supporters and opponents of the negotiation between the state and Red Brigade members with a clear prevalence of the latter. Appeals for clemency fell on deaf ears (including those from the Pope and the UN Secretary General) and the action of the Police Force proved to be ineffective; the statesman’s body was found by the Red Brigades on 9 May 1978 in the trunk of a car via Caetani in Rome.
I DIE AGAIN. FIRST PART
On the eve of May 9, fateful date in recent Italian history, let’s go back to talking about Moro. That day the body of a statesman, one of the few worthy of being named as such, was found in via Caetani in the center of Rome, a few steps from the palaces of power. Palaces of a once very powerful power of which today, although transformed, few remains remain. A few steps from Caesar’s altar where the tyrannicide was committed and adjacent to other seats of potentates unknown to most.
The need to write about this fundamental chapter of the attack on the State arises from the need, which can no longer be postponed in time, to keep alive in the collective conscience some questions which to date, 46 years later, have not had an answer. In fact, after so many years, isn’t it strange to still have to talk about it? It is a duty of memory to at least keep the questions intact, awaiting answers.
1) The friend “Fritz”.
Reading the documents of the various trials celebrated on the massacre of the escort men, on the imprisonment and murder of the Honorable Aldo Moro, a question continued to circle in my head like an annoying fly. One of those questions that might seem, at first glance, secondary, not revealing who knows
what truth. Nevertheless. Yet the Red Brigades often referred to their precious hostage as their friend “Fritz”. What or who is “Fritz”. Why?
Pietro Mascagni wrote this opera with a libretto by Nicola Daspuro (pseudonym P. Suardon), based
on the 1876 comedy “L’ami Fritz” by the Erckmann-Chatrian couple. The first and most natural question is related to who could have been such a profound connoisseur of twentieth-century musical production as to be able to grasp the hidden meaning of the character “Fritz”. This operatic figure in fact represents the cumbersome, always present on the stage, protagonist of the opera to which he gives his name.
A connecting character in the entire work who plots and fights to be able to carry out his projects often to the detriment of the desires of the other supporting characters. This highly refined and hidden meaning could only have been conceived by a profound connoisseur of Mascagni’s work who, for professional reasons or simply for reasons of cultural passion, had had a profound knowledge of it. We believe that no member of the Red Brigades, even with a profound political conscience, could ever have conceived and connected the two figures. One cumbersome on the stage, the other on the political stage. Two figures, one artistic and one political, united by the power to direct the lives of others and with a very different final destiny. Fritz will fulfill his dream of love with the beautiful Suzel, Moro will end up crouched in the trunk of an anonymous Renault 4.
2) “The Director”
In this context, the figure of Igor Markevitch stands out upon careful reading of the events. (1912-1983) By
Ukrainian origins, he moved to Paris at a very young age where he had the opportunity to frequent the salons and come into contact with the intellectuals of the time, among them Cocteau. During the war, in Florence, he was a point of contact between the resistance and the command of the English OSS. A dazzling career as an orchestra conductor and his marriage to Topazia Caetani, who lived in Palazzo Caetani, in via Caetani in Rome. Even if Markevitch does not seem to have ever directed this work, it is reasonable to think that he knew it well having studied it as logically as he wants.
3) “The Quadrilateral” and Palazzo Caetani.
To better focus on the position of this historic building, we must say that in addition to being adjacent to the Jewish ghetto it had in the area, in those years, the house of a judge in the Moro Ter trial, the Italy-USSR association, the American Study Center and the house of the mother of a Red Brigade member who boasted contacts with some secret service in the “area”. It all happened here, concentrated between via San’Elena n. 8, Caesar’s altar, Palazzo Caetani and its underground rooms. Furthermore, it is worth remembering that this building has a vast courtyard inside which, in addition to the offices of the State Institute for the Conservation of Sound Heritage, also overlook the fabric storage warehouses of the neighboring shops.
Not far away is Via Celsa with the headquarters of one of the most important Masonic lodges. In front of Palazzo del Gesù and via delle Botteghe Oscure. It is reasonable to think that the basements of these ancient buildings are connected by a network of passages well below street level, considering that the Crypta Balbi is just a few steps away and goes down several meters from the current road level.
How useful could a mapping of the connections between the various buildings in the area be? How many surprises could they reveal?
