2015 Programme
Event #38
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Ernst Kantorowicz: from the Freikorps to McCarthyism
Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1963) was a leading expert on power during the Middle Ages. Influenced by Nietzsche, in his biography of emperor Frederick II he celebrated the ruler as a superman, capable of transcending his time and changing the course of history. A German nationalist, volunteer soldier in the first World War, in the years between the wars he enrolled in the Freikorps, who bloodily repressed the Bolshevik Revolution. Kantorowicz, however, was a Jew, and with the rise of Nazism he migrated to America, where he was offered a chair at Berkeley. In 1949, during the McCarthy era, the university forced its entire faculty to take an anti-Communist vow: Kantorowicz was one of the few who refused. His gesture cost him his job and sparked a debate that would have great resonance, paving the way towards the shift in perspective which would soon put an end to the extreme measures of the witch-hunt.
Alessandro Barbero is a historian and a writer and a tenured professor of Medieval History at Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale e Vercelli. He writes for La Stampa and Tuttolibri. He is a contributor on the television program Superquark and the shows Il tempo e la storia and a.C.d.C., broadcast by Rai Storia. His publications include: Benedette guerre. Crociate e jihad («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2009), Lepanto. La battaglia dei tre imperi («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2010), Donne, madonne, mercanti e cavalieri. Sei storie medievali («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2013), published by Laterza; Gli occhi di Venezia (Mondadori, 2011); Il divano di Istanbul (Sellerio, 2011); Dietro le quinte della Storia. La vita quotidiana attraverso il tempo, written with P. Angela (Rizzoli, 2012); Le Ateniesi (Mondadori, 2015); Costantino il vincitore (Salerno Editrice, 2016); Le parole del papa (2016) and Caporetto (2017), published by Laterza. Il divano di Istanbul (2011), Alabama (2021) and Poeta al comando (2022) and Brick for stone (2023), published by Sellerio.
Event #6
Alessandro Barbero
The historian's responsibility. Gaetano Salvemini: from Socialist interventionism to anti-Fascism
Event #8Approfonditamente
Marco Rossi-Doria, Giulia Tosoni
Kids and school: what, how and where are they learning
Event #13Approfonditamente
Adolfo Ceretti, Simonetta Agnello Hornby, Alfredo Verde
Gender-based violence: Perpetrators, victims and models of intervention.
Event #22
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Marc Bloch: from the Sorbonne to the Gestapo prisons
Event #25Approfonditamente
Marco Belpoliti, Gianfranco Marrone, Anna Stefi
Laziness, fatigue, and our constant running
Event #26
Eugenio Borgna, Simonetta Fiori
Knowing ourselves and knowing others: a different way of being responsible
Event #35
James R. Flynn, Armando Massarenti
Without an alibi: a voyage across life’s greatest questions
Event #38
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Ernst Kantorowicz: from the Freikorps to McCarthyism
Event #57Children / Kids
Sante Bandirali e Lorenza Pozzi di uovonero
Read like you’ve never read before
