Enzo Collotti and Contemporary History in Italy

This article introduces a group of essays whose aim is to commemorate, a few months after his death, a great Italian scholar of European breadth, Enzo Collotti (1929-2021). Collotti was for many decades one of the most important representatives of contemporary Italian historiography. Besides recalling the essential points of his life and studies, this article highlights the fact that Collotti was both one of the first Italian university professors of contemporary history, and an engaged scholar whose philological and methodological rigor remained intact. The articles deal with the years spent by Collotti at the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Institute, 1959-1963 (David Bidussa), they emphasize the importance of Collotti as a great European historian of the twentieth century (Mariuccia Salvati), with his difficulty in declaring himself Linkssozialist after the Second World War. They examine Collotti’s role as post-World War II Italy’s greatest Germanist historian (Brunello Mantelli), his commitment to the trial for the crimes committed at the Risiera di San Sabba (Tullia Catalan), his research on anti-Jewish persecutions and on the Shoah in Italy and Europe (Valeria Galimi). Finally, they highlight Collotti’s international openness and the new historiographical trajectories he pursued as a university professor (Silvia Salvatici), and the important activities he carried out for over thirty years with high school teachers in Florence (Gaspare Polizzi).

Keywords: Enzo Collotti, Historiography, Contemporary history, Italy

Nicola Labanca, Enzo Collotti e la storia contemporanea in Italia in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 298/2022, pp 15-25, DOI: 10.3280/IC2022-298002