Abstract
This article examines the life and activities of the Italian intellectual Aldo Mieli (1879-1950) as examples of the impact on intellectual agendas of interference by the authorities. Mieli is nowadays known as one of the founders of the history of science as an autonomous discipline and as a pioneer of gay rights. For most of his life he managed to further his activities related to the history of science. The political career that he started as a young man, however, was cut short because the Italian Socialist Party could not accept his homosexuality. His first exile (to France in 1928), and his leaving of one of the two journals he had founded, Rassegna di studi sessuali (which hosted discussions on all aspects of sexuality), in the hands of people close to the Fascist regime have been generally seen as Mieli’s free choice. But his private correspondence reveals that his hatred and fear of the regime left him with no option. In particular, the regime did not tolerate any opposition to its demographic policy and its own view of eugenics. As a consequence Rassegna was brought into line and Mieli pushed aside. The Fascist regime thus covertly closed down a prominent forum for discussion of sexuality and homosexuality.
MIELI'S OWN LIFE-STORY, RECOUNTED IN THE 1940s
On the night of New Year's Eve 1943, aged sixty-four, the Italian historian of science Aldo Mieli (1879–1950) wrote a passionate autobiographical article in Spanish, the language of the country of his second exile, Argentina.1 During his life Mieli had achieved a great deal. He had founded two journals, Rassegna di studi sessuali and Archeion (still published as Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences) and two important institutions: the International Committee for the History of Science (still active as the International Academy of the History of Science), a learned society that organized international conferences and co-ordinated the activities of national groups from all over the world, and the Unit for the History of Science at the Centre de synthèse in Paris. He had published many books, some of which are considered classics of the history of chemistry,2 and a remarkable number of book reviews, and he had edited several book series.3 He had given a tremendous impulse to the history of science in three countries, and he is seen nowadays as one of the founders of the history of science as an autonomous discipline,4 as well as a pioneer of gay rights.5
Yet, at the end of 1943 all seemed lost and the future bleak. The distance from Europe must have felt very great to him, as the war had made communications with his continent of origin extremely difficult. In a letter dated 7 July 1942, to the US-based historian of science George Sarton, founder and editor of the journal Isis, Mieli had written that for one year he had not been able to receive news from his friends in Italy, nor from his associates in France, the country of his first exile. In this letter, he expressed particular concern about the historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger, with whom for ten years he had organized the work of the Unit for the History of Science at the Centre de synthèse in Paris.6 Sarton himself would inform Mieli that Metzger, after being detained in a concentration camp near Lyon, had been deported to Germany.7 Her final destination was Auschwitz; she probably died en route.8
The emotions that brought Mieli to write that autobiographical article can only be imagined. On the one hand, the previous September, Italy had signed the unconditional armistice with the Allies: Italian Fascism had fallen at last. On the other, Fascism had not disappeared; Italy was partly occupied by the Germans and partly ruled by Mussolini's Italian Social Republic. The war was still raging, he did not know whether his friends were safe, his health was declining, and the deafness which had affected him since his Parisian sojourn9 must have made his sense of isolation even greater.
It seemed that all Mieli's projects had come to an end. His journal Archeion, his ‘dear child’,10 that he had founded in 1919 as Archivio di storia della scienza could no longer appear.11 The Argentinian Universidad del Litoral, which had published it in the previous three years, had axed it, and Mieli's contract as director of the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science had been rescinded.12 Following the coup d’état of June 1943 the new government had dismissed the university's vice-chancellor, and the new one (in Mieli's view ‘reactionary and priest-like’) had full powers to sack staff.13 At the end of 1943, Mieli found himself once again in a dictatorship, which he privately described as ‘reactionary, clerical, fascist and anti-Semite’, and once again was planning an escape – to Cuba, to Mexico or possibly back to Italy.14 He may have seen the account of his life as a sort of curriculum vitae for the benefit of future hosts, employers and friends, although its publication would have done nothing for his difficult position in Argentina. He planned to publish it as preface to his latest work on history of science. However, his Argentinean publisher refused to print it.15
His autobiographical article was eventually published in 1948, in Archeion indeed, now renamed Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences. His journal had been resurrected thanks to UNESCO, which also funded Mieli's other ‘child’,16 the International Academy of History of Science, founded in 1928 as International Committee for the History of Science.17 Mieli decided to publish his article in Spanish, but added a title and a short introduction (dated November 1947) in French, in which he emphasized that the following piece expressed his ‘irreducible aversion’ to Fascism and all totalitarian regimes. Considering that Mieli's article covers all of his intellectual activities, this introduction was clearly intended to steer the reader towards the part where he wrote about his love for democracy and equality, his socialist beliefs and his brief political engagement.
Mieli had not referred publicly to his socialist ideas for most of his life, nor to his political involvement with the Italian Socialist Party in his youth. It is clear that he wanted to set the record straight, but this time only for posterity. He had failed in his plans to migrate, and his last years in Argentina were plagued by illness, depression and isolation.18 When the piece was finally published, he was probably just waiting for his own death: the following year, in 1949, he wrote to George Sarton that he did not know how long he had left to live.19 He died in 1950.
Despite all that Mieli created in his life, departures were its most prominent feature – from countries, organizations and enterprises. In 1903 he left the Italian Socialist Party, the Peasants’ League that he had helped to set up, and his post as town councillor. In 1928 he left Italy, his friends, his home, his teaching, and his journal Rassegna di studi sessuali (Review of Sexual Studies). In 1939 he left France and the Unit for the History of Science at the Centre de synthèse. Finally in 1943 he tried to leave Argentina, but did not succeed. The reasons for his movements and choices may appear very different, and indeed may not reveal themselves at all, depending on whether we read what he expressed publicly, or privately to a very small number of friends, or whether we read the accounts that the Italian police produced, or the accounts given after his death by colleagues. Two activities which figure prominently in his 1943–8 autobiographical piece are those least discussed after he abandoned them: his political engagement and his study of sexuality. These two activities in my view were for him linked to each other, and in some ways the latter absorbed some motivations of the former. A work of reconstruction reveals that the Fascist regime, unbeknownst to most, managed to take over Rassegna in order to stamp out ideas that did not coincide with its official line.
I will tackle Mieli's sets of activities one at a time, starting with his youthful political engagement, and its abrupt end. The space given to each set will be somewhat proportional to the level of interference that the authorities exerted on it. Therefore, although Mieli is widely and internationally known as a historian of science, I will recount his activities in this field rather cursorily, for he managed on the whole to preserve them across exiles, apart from the late setback inflicted by the Argentinean authorities, mentioned above. Luckily, other publications deal with this important part of his life.20 I shall pay more attention to the other major interest in his life, the study of sexuality, which he had to abandon when he left Italy. His own sexuality, as we shall see, created many problems for him and indeed brought his political activity to a premature end at the beginning of the twentieth century.
SIDING WITH WORKERS AND PEASANTS: AN INTERRUPTED BEGINNING
Mieli's brief season of political engagement was clearly central to his image of his own life, as shown by his autobiographical piece of 1943–8. This might have come as a surprise to many of his colleagues and friends. He does not seem to have discussed his spell as a political activist after it was over, and the obituaries that came out immediately after his death do not mention this part of his life.21 However he made sure to leave his own obituary, as it were.
In his autobiographical piece he recalled not only his socialist ideas, but his participation in the struggle against capitalism with workers and peasants, whom he considered his ‘true brothers’. His emphasis on having felt close to workers and peasants suggests that he was not one of them by birth or occupation. In fact, he came from a family of wealthy Jewish landowners in Chianciano, a small spa town in Tuscany.22 They had moved there from Livorno in 1880, the year following Aldo's birth.23 Mieli's social position meant that his political activism as a member of the Socialist Party, which culminated in his election as town councillor in Chianciano in 1901, immediately attracted police attention. The party was of course perfectly legal, as was his election to a minor position in a small provincial town. (The other socialist councillor elected with him, Umberto Lucherini, went on to become in 1907 Chianciano's first socialist mayor.)24 Nevertheless, the police appeared keen to find a pretext to arrest Mieli: the author of a police report dated June 1901 lamented that it had not been possible to catch him breaking the law, despite continuous surveillance. What the police seemed to fear in particular was his potential influence on the peasants, both because of his social position, and because he had financial means. In fact, they presented him as a sort of class traitor: for them he ‘behaved badly’ towards his own family, as he encouraged his fathers’ peasants to demand better pay and conditions.25
Mieli's political career lasted less than two years. We have two explanations for its abrupt end. His own version is rather vague: he claimed to have been upset by what was not sincere and purely idealistic in the Socialist movement.26 The police version was more detailed. According to their documents Mieli's ‘manifest immorality’ had become widely known, and everybody in Chianciano considered him a homosexual.27 Although the various attempts, starting in the 1870s, to pass laws against homosexuality had been unsuccessful, the prejudice against it was strong and pervasive. Moreover, there was a tendency to regard homosexuality as a physiological ‘anomaly’. (The influential criminologist Cesare Lombroso a few years later alleged that it also had strong links to criminality.)28 Mieli's homosexuality was reportedly the reason why he was asked to resign from both the local Party and the Peasants’ League, as well as his position as councillor. He promptly obliged in January 1903.29 After this, Mieli gave up any public political role, and indeed political activity. The only exception seems to be a series of five articles published in 1914 in a socialist newspaper of Sarteano, a small Tuscan town, under the pseudonym of Ego. In his own words, these articles expressed a ‘sincerely internationalist and pacifist attitude’, being equally removed from ‘interventionism’ and from ‘Germanophile or Giolittian [Giovanni Giolitti, five times Italian prime minister, including 1911–14] pacifism’.30 Mieli revealed in 1917 that he was behind those articles, in a book-length catalogue of his own works.31 The police, who lost interest in him around 1909, did not link him with these articles, nor did they detect any political activity on his part either then or later in his life when their surveillance was resumed.32
For about twenty years there were no new records in Mieli's police file. However in early 1929, when Fascism was solidly in power, the secret police searched his flat in Rome. Mieli had moved to France some six months earlier, and his flat was occupied by two of his friends. He believed that the police were looking for anti-fascist literature, regarded the search of his flat as a consequence of his ‘flight’ to France, and concluded that his return to Italy was now impossible.33 This shows that, after witnessing the ruthless elimination of political opponents at the hand of the Fascists, he thought that his socialist beliefs, and his past political activities, put him in danger. To make things worse, Mieli's name and address in Rome were seen by a police informer in a notebook belonging to the anarchist Camillo Berneri (1897–1937), along with more than sixty other names.34 From then until 1941 Mieli would always be under the eyes of Fascist spies, although he never returned to live in Italy.
At the time of the communication of Mieli's name and Rome address in Berneri's list, Berneri had already fled to France, and, ironically, had published a pamphlet with the names of the Fascist spies who infiltrated exile anti-Fascist groups in France. Mieli was also in Paris. The relationship between Berneri and Mieli is unclear: apart from that snippet of information provided by the police informer, there does not appear to be evidence of any link between the two. However, it does not seem far-fetched that Berneri could have seen the other as a potential friend. Berneri converted to anarchism at the beginning of the First World War, disappointed with the Italian Socialist Party's acceptance of the war. Until then he had been not only a socialist, but a disciple of Camillo Prampolini,35 whose ‘evangelical’ socialism was the model of Mieli's own socialism.36 Incidentally, Mieli was probably able to attend the speeches that Prampolini gave at Colle Val d'Elsa, a Tuscan village, home to the socialist periodical La Martinella, for which Mieli had written.37 Berneri, born in Lodi near Milan, moved to Tuscany in 1916, first to Arezzo and then to Florence where in 1922 he gained a degree in philosophy. In this period Mieli was already living in Rome, although presumably he regularly spent time in his Tuscan villa, till he sold it in the 1920s. (It is now a luxury holiday residence and a dozen of the estate farmhouses are holiday homes.) Whatever the substance of the evidence held by the secret police on him, by 1930 they saw Mieli as a ‘dangerous socialist’.38 But he was now in Paris, immersed in his many activities, all related to history of science. His interest in history of science had started many years earlier, and it stayed with him until the end of his life.
HISTORY OF SCIENCE: A LIFE-LONG ENGAGEMENT
At the age of twenty-four, Mieli had already lost his future in politics, but he had other ambitions. In 1904 he obtained a degree in chemistry, and in 1904–5 spent six months in Germany, where he attended the lectures of the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald at the University of Leipzig, and came in contact with Ernst Mach's philosophy. Both experiences stirred his interest towards epistemology and the history of science.39 He continued his work in chemistry for several years: in 1908 he moved to Rome to work with the eminent professor of chemistry Emanuele Paternò,40 qualified as a university lecturer in chemistry (libera docenza), and offered courses of chemistry at the University of Rome.
His interests were broadening, however. Already in 1907 the topics of his articles were shifting towards history and philosophy of science, and for a time he also wrote music reviews.41 In 1912 he created a section dedicated to the history of science in the journal Rivista di filosofia, but this he soon abandoned when given the opportunity to edit the Italian bibliography for the new journal Isis, which was to become the most important history of science journal worldwide. He collaborated with the journal Scientia, and edited a series of classic works in science and philosophy for the publisher Laterza. He wrote articles on how to promote history of science and, in 1916, a pamphlet calling for the creation of a chair of history of science in Italian universities.42 At the same time, he wrote books on history of science and gained a qualification as lecturer in history of science (a second libera docenza), which enabled him to give courses in history of science at the University of Rome between 1919 and 1928 and the University of Perugia in 1926.43
Aldo Mieli's most enduring legacy is the history of science journal Archeion, which he started in 1919. He edited it from Italy first, then from France, and finally from Argentina, always keeping complete editorial control. He also funded it, although he was very skilled in securing external funding, as shown by the long list of governments and organizations providing support for the International committee, of which Archeion was the organ.44Archeion raised Mieli's professional profile and placed him in an extensive network of scholars. Despite starting off as a journal rooted in national culture,45 it soon became very international, both as to authors and topics.46 Its increasingly international character was strengthened by the inclusion of articles in several languages, the introduction of abstracts in Interlingua, or Latino sine flexione (an artificial language devised by the mathematician Giuseppe Peano),47 and by the addition of the title Archeion (‘archive’ in Greek) to the original Archivio di storia della scienza; the French, German, English and Spanish translations of the Italian subtitle were also added on the frontispiece.
Archeion also served as the organ of two organizations that Mieli created, the International Committee for the History of Science (later Academy),48 and the Unit for History of Science at the Centre de synthèse. The International Committee's launch in 1928 coincided with Mieli's move to France. Henri Berr, the founder (in 1925) and director of the Centre de synthèse, who was later to share the directorship with the historian Lucien Febvre and the philosopher and historian of science Abel Rey, invited Mieli to create and direct a Unit for the History of Science there. As director of this unit, Mieli organized frequent meetings and seminars, and initiated the creation of a comprehensive history of science bibliography. The milieu in which Mieli found himself in France was extremely dynamic, and more ‘international and internationalist’, in his own words, than his own Italian milieu.49
Archeion was the real constant in Mieli's life. He personally contributed an impressive number of reviews (thirty-eight just in the first volume). Although he moved to France in 1928, Archeion went on being printed in Rome until 1938, by Mieli's publishing house and printing establishment ‘Leonardo da Vinci’. The 1939 issue of Archeion did not appear: that year Mieli arrived in Argentina so ill that his colleagues, who had gone to collect him at the harbour, immediately took him to hospital, where he remained for several months.50 In 1940 Archeion started to come out again, published by the Universidad del Litoral. Mieli had signed a contract with this University that included not only the directorship of the newly founded Institute for the History of Science, but also their acquisition of Archeion. For the first time Mieli relinquished some of the control over Archeion, although not control over its contents. Undoubtedly he took this risk because he had no choice, and, as we have seen, it had disastrous consequences.
Mieli gave a tremendous impulse to the history of science as a discipline. His focus appears to have been to facilitate the work of, and creation of tools for, historians of science, including a journal, societies, conferences, seminars and – all-important in his eyes – bibliographies. With some differences, his focus on bibliographies resembled that of George Sarton.51 His publications were also in large part intended as synthesis and surveys, like for instance his overview of the history of science (of which only the first volume was published, in three different languages), his biographical dictionary of Italian scientists (of which only the first two volumes were published), his overview of Arabic science, and his fifty-page intellectual biography of Lavoisier.52 In the French context, Mieli's view of the advancement of history of science as accumulation of facts appeared to be historiographically old-fashioned. The new focus in France on mentalities, not only of historians in general, but also of historians and philosophers of science in particular, passed him by completely. It comes as no surprise that although he spent much time in the same room with his fellow historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger, who paid close attention to mentalities, they did not collaborate on any publications. Similarly, Mieli gave a thoroughly negative assessment of Alexandre Koyré's study of Galileo, which Koyré presented at one of Mieli's seminars.53
Mieli's view of sexuality and of homosexuality appeared to be far more novel for the times than his approach to history of science, but his work in this field was interrupted in the late 1920s, and in a way that hastened his departure from Italy.
STUDYING AND LIVING SEXUALITY: FROM RASSEGNA DI STUDI SESSUALI TO SILENCE
A breath of fresh air: the trips to Germany
Prejudice against Mieli's sexuality stunted his political ambitions and probably changed the course of his life. As a young man, he might have seen himself as a career politician, or possibly a trade unionist, but that project was soon over. An enemy of his own social class, he had also been rejected by the working and peasant classes. His social position, however, had afforded him an education, knowledge of foreign languages and means to travel. His trips to Germany had particular importance not only for his networking with other intellectuals – an activity in which he always excelled – but also for new and important experiences.
He visited Germany for the second time in 1921, in order to take part in the first ever Congress of Sexology, in Berlin. Mieli was on the organizing committee, which was chaired by the sexology pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld.54 In the same year Mieli founded Rassegna di studi sessuali, and he was particularly interested in meeting the experts in the field of his new-born journal. Hirschfeld's studies of homosexuality interested him especially, by his own admission.55 In his long review for Rassegna of Hirschfeld's Sexualpathologie, Mieli stressed that Hirschfeld not only studied homosexuals, but also ‘courageously’ defended them; Mieli approved of Hirschfeld's political views, ‘healthily’ oriented towards internationalism and socialism. He remarked that Hirschfeld had attracted the nationalists’ hatred, and had even been the victim of a physical attack, because of his opinions and because he belonged to a ‘race’ regarded unfavourably in those countries, like Germany, ‘that are still backward in this respect’ (Hirschfeld was Jewish).56
Mieli held a positive opinion of Hirschfeld as a scholar and a campaigner, and regarded his theories on sexual pathology favourably as far as biological phenomena were concerned. He had doubts however about the link between physical and psychological conditions that the German theorized. Hirschfeld interpreted differences of gender and sexual orientation, as well as sexual pathologies, in biological, and particularly endocrinological terms. By contrast, Mieli wanted to preserve the autonomy of individual psychological make-up from physical traits. He also, though gently, objected to the fact that in Sexualpathologie homosexuality was analysed alongside phenomena like hermaphroditism and androgyny. To him, homosexuality should not have been listed as an ‘irregularity’. Indeed, he remarked that in every individual there is a potential bisexuality, independent of physical traits. What he appreciated more than anything else in Hirschfeld was his insistence that human beings should be free to express their own individuality.57
Berlin for Mieli was not only about learned discussions, however. Under the guidance of ‘a very kind person’ Mieli also became acquainted with the world of Berlin's homosexual cafés and clubs, from the ‘most sophisticated’ ball rooms and a theatre, to the ‘lowest taverns’, and even, overcoming some practical difficulties, a lesbian club.58 The ‘kind person’ might have been Hirschfeld himself, as he habitually frequented pubs and hotels where homosexuals gathered, even before making his own homosexuality public, and often took doctors and artists with him.59
Aldo Mieli and his friend Gino Chiappini, in Chiappini's ‘powerful’ Alfa Romeo, Berlin, 1925. Illustration to Aldo Mieli, ‘Un viaggio in Germania’, Archivio di storia della scienza 7, 1926.
Postcard to Mieli signed by some of the most prominent German historians of science and dated 24 Sept. 1926. Illustration to Aldo Mieli, ‘Un viaggio in Germania’, Archivio di storia della scienza 7, 1926.
Mieli's description of his third visit to Germany, in 1925, is full of life and cheerfulness. He went with his friend Gino Chiappini, who was a typographer, twenty years his junior.60 Chiappini drove Mieli in his own ‘powerful’ Alfa Romeo, at the ‘crazy’ speed of hundred kilometres per hour.61 When Mieli moved to Paris in 1928, Chiappini kept printing Archeion in Rome, and looked after some of Mieli's affairs, including the sale of one of his properties.62 Chiappini was left behind in Mieli's flat in Rome, which he shared with another typographer, Angelo Pisani, Chiappini's contemporary. This was the flat that was searched by the police, who reported finding ‘pornographic’ photographs, all of male subjects.63 After the Second World War, from his Argentinean exile, Mieli tried to locate Chiappini, but was not able to get any news of him, and sadly concluded that his companion of youthful adventures had probably died.64
Mieli's subsequent trip to Germany (1926) was prompted by an invitation from the sexologist Albert Moll, who had organized an international conference in Berlin. Incidentally, Mieli made no mention of the fact that Moll was Hirschfeld's arch-enemy. Despite the official reason for his trip, Mieli spent his time in Germany meeting historians of science, often as a guest in their homes, including Ludwig Darmstaedter, the historian of technology Franz Maria Feldhaus, and the historians of medicine Karl Sudhoff and Henry Sigerist. The Swiss (Paris-born) Sigerist, who at the time lectured at the University of Leipzig, and in 1932 would move to Johns Hopkins University, remained Mieli's friend until the latter's death.
Rassegna di studi sessuali
Mieli founded the journal Rassegna di studi sessuali two years after Archeion, in 1921, but had to abandon it when he moved to France. Unlike Archeion, Rassegna is no longer published. These two journals were the outputs of Mieli's two strong interests. One, history of science, was directly related to his qualifications and career. In the other, the study of sexuality, science, ethics, politics and his view of human life all came together.
As explained in the introduction of the Rassegna's first issue, the journal had two broad aims. The first was to co-ordinate the diverse branches of sex studies, which, Mieli spelled out, are called with a ‘new term, not yet common among us [Italians]’: ‘sexology’ (sessuologia). The journal would cover, he assured, studies in the fields of psychology, biology, physiology and sociology. The second aim was educational. Its less controversial part was to inform the public about sexually transmitted diseases, a grave preoccupation at the time both for health professionals and policy makers. Mieli also wanted, however, to dispel the widespread ignorance on sexuality, that, he argued, led to ‘false’ intimate relationships, and to combat the superstitions that destroy ‘life in its blossom’ and often ‘suffocate … a soul’.65 It is difficult not to think that by ‘false’ intimate relationships Mieli meant heterosexual relationships entertained only so as to conform to society's demands, and that by superstitions he meant prejudices against homosexuality. Consistently, in his 1943–8 autobiographical article he wrote that for years he promoted spiritual and physical love, and a better understanding of sexual life, in order to eradicate deep-seated false opinions. He felt confident that he had had some success, and that he had comforted and supported people in distress. However, he continued, he was aware that at first sight his work ended in failure, as brutal power, arrogance and superstition took over.66 Here Mieli alluded to the circumstances of Rassegna's demise, which I shall discuss below.
Rassegna covered a great variety of topics and hosted diverse positions. A relatively small but significant number of articles dealt with cultural questions, analyzing for instance literary and philosophical works and popular culture. The majority addressed topical issues, which were looked at from scientific, social, cultural and political points of view. Sexually transmitted disease was a central theme, along with prostitution and homosexuality. Homosexuality was discussed in an open and unprejudiced manner, and Rassegna has been seen by a modern critic as the pre-eminent forum for discussion of homosexuality in Italy in that period.67 Many contributions, in particular those of Mieli and of ‘Proteus’,68 directly countered the negative views of homosexuality proposed by Lombroso and his disciples, as well as by Futurists and Fascists, as part of their cult of aggressive masculinity.69
Mieli aimed at discussing questions regarding sex in a scientific manner that would divorce them from Catholic and generally traditional morality. Science, in his view, would contribute to the defeat of prejudice about the diverse manifestations of sexuality. At the same time, he never forgot to appeal to the importance of ‘love’, and rejected the ‘northern [European]’ concepts of eugenics, which included ‘abhorrent’ practices such as forced sterilization. Indeed, in one newspaper article he remarked that if Ludwig van Beethoven's alcoholic parents had been prevented from having children, the world would have lost one of his greatest artists.70 In general, his admiration for science was never separated from a cultural approach: for instance, while urging action against alcohol abuse, he deplored the abolitionism practiced in the United States, on the grounds that alcohol had helped ‘to create masterpieces’ in the arts and sciences and to make life ‘more cheerful and pleasant’.71
Rassegna became the organ of a number of associations, first of all of SISQS, the Società italiana per lo studio di questioni sessuali (Italian Society for the Study of Sexuality), which Mieli promoted and of which, until the end of 1923, he was the ‘secretary with full powers’, and then secretary alongside a chairperson, the medical doctor Silvestro Baglioni. However, Mieli failed to attract a wide range of intellectuals, and the medics ended up dominating the proceedings. As a result, efforts were concentrated on how to prevent sexually transmitted disease, while Mieli's research group on ‘intermediate sexual forms’ struggled.72 The focus in Rassegna on combating venereal disease was reinforced by the presence of another association which used the journal as its organ: the Lega italiana contro il pericolo venereo (Italian League against Venereal Threat).
Rassegna was also the organ of SIGE, Società italiana di genetica e eugenetica (Italian Society of Genetics and Eugenics), founded in 1919 by the statistician Corrado Gini, the biologist Cesare Artom and the gynaecologist and (from 1923) senator Ernesto Pestalozza. The latter, from 1927, was also a member of the Parliamentary committee that examined draft public health laws. The members of SIGE had a range of views on what the eugenic programme should be. In general, the eugenics focus in Italy in the 1920s was on the prevention of sexually transmitted disease and on the much-discussed pre-marital health certificate. Eugenics was often called ‘social eugenics’, as in the title of the 1924 congress held in Milan, and the emphasis was mainly on social interventions, with the exclusion of such practices as sterilization.73 Moreover eugenics generally was not linked to the concept of ‘race’, or its preservation. Indeed, at this stage, the concept of race in Italy was generally a ‘cultural or social category defined by language and geography, by a shared culture, perhaps by a vague spiritual or moral ideal’.74
However Gini, the founder and from 1926 director of SIGE, was among those who did have a biologically-based conception of race. He wrote a letter as early as 1919 to Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin's son and president of the British Eugenics Society, in which he proposed European-wide legislation against sexual relationships between white and black people. Italian authorities introduced racist legislation in the late 1930s: first in Ethiopia, for instance with a 1937 law that forbade Italian men to entertain ‘marriage-like’ relationships with Ethiopian women, and then in Italy in 1938 and 1939. However, another founder of SIGE, Cesare Artom, was decisively against any ‘artificial selection’ in human beings, and believed that it was just not possible to prevent people from procreating.75
In these debates there was a particular division that was going to be crucial: that between those who thought that births should be controlled, in quantity and quality, and those who opposed any such attempt. In the first group, some advocated the limitation of births for eugenic reasons, typically through the pre-marital certificate. Others, notably Ettore Levi, took a neo-Malthusian position and campaigned for voluntary birth control. Levi was an important member of SISQS, and in 1922 the founder of IPAS, Istituto di previdenza e assistenza sociale (Institute of Social Welfare). Those in favour of limiting births, in different ways and for different reasons, were all opposed by those who rejected any such attempt on various grounds, including cultural, moral and religious.
In the meantime Mussolini started elaborating policies decisively aimed at promoting the number of births. Members of the SISQS tried to influence the dictator's policies. Ettore Levi, who saluted Mussolini as the ‘new man’, obtained both a private conversation with him and financial support for his IPAS. However, Levi's view on birth control could not be seen favourably by the Fascist regime, and as a consequence he lost first his funding, and then the directorship of the Institute. In 1923, a member of SISQS, Pietro Capasso, who was also a Socialist MP,76 a doctor and the editor of the journal Pensiero sanitario, went to Mussolini carrying a copy of Rassegna di studi sessuali, but all his arguments in favour of the pre-marital certificate met with the Mussolini's disapproval and reminder that Italians had to have plenty of offspring.77
The debate on eugenics was shortly going to come to an end, as the regime stepped up its rhetoric, muffled opposition and introduced legislation intended to increase the number of births. From 1 January 1927 unmarried men between the age of twenty-five and sixty-five years were to pay a new ‘bachelor tax’, and from 1928 large families were granted a tax exemption. Moreover, tougher laws were introduced against contraception and abortion, both widely deployed and generally seen by the population as socially acceptable.78
The regime progressively tightened its control on information and education, and issues around population were no exception. For example, in 1928 an article on qualitative eugenics in a Fascist magazine edited by the MP Leandro Arpinati, who was also the deputy leader of the Fascist Party, prompted Mussolini to send a vitriolic telegram to Arpinati, telling him never to publish anything of the kind again.79 A more general example of the control over the media that Mussolini had achieved is the intervention on the book industry, from 1926, when the association of booksellers and publishers was brought under state control. Publishers were prevented from producing their own school textbooks, just as teachers were denied the freedom to choose them; national textbooks were introduced, which, in the words of the education minister talking to the Parliament, would enable Fascist education criteria to prevail.80
In this climate, it would have been surprising if Rassegna were left free to advance its debates on sexuality. However, what was seen by its readers was rather different from what went on behind the scenes, and most contemporaries, as well as most modern critics, appear to have been unaware of it. Readers of Rassegna may have noticed some changes, although on the surface these were far from dramatic. In 1927, the SISQS changed name: the Italian Society for the Study of Sexuality became the Italian Society of Sexology, Demography and Eugenics (Società italiana di sessuologia, demografia e eugenetica). Demography was the name of the political game, and Rassegna might appear to go along with it, to the point that the second issue of 1927 opened with Mussolini's speech about his government's demographic programme.81 In 1930, the names of three editors appeared alongside Mieli's, including that of Silvestro Baglioni, the chair of SISQS. The other two (Amedeo della Volta and Arturo Fontana) were there only for the year. In 1931 the three editors were Baglioni, Artom and Gini. Mieli's name no longer appears, not even as the founder. Baglioni was the unofficial spokesperson of the Fascist demographic programme, to which he lent scientific support in his Principi di eugenetica (1926).82 Artom was an opponent of any birth control, while Gini supported theories which would be the basis of the racist policies of the 1930s. In 1930, Rassegna was renamed Genesis, and became the organ of only one association, the Italian Federation of Eugenics.
Not only did Mieli publish Mussolini's speech in Rassegna, but he also made a show of support for the government in Archeion. In a 1926 note, Mieli remarked that the history of science bibliography published in that journal would inform the world about the work done in Italy, ‘in accordance with the good work of the National Government’.83 The following year, he thanked two successive education secretaries of the Fascist regime for their support. Critics have taken Mieli's actions and words at their face-value,84 when in fact private documents reveal that Mieli was simply afraid of opposing the government.
Mieli's letters disclose that Mieli, while praising the government, was in fact planning to flee Italy. His networking with historians of science rather than sexologists during his 1926 trip to Germany shows that he already knew he would not be able to hold on to Rassegna. The following year, Mieli spelt out his difficulties in a letter to George Sarton. He took advantage of a trip to Paris to write this letter, which, he said, he had meant to write for a long time but had not dared post from Italy, because there mail could be read by the authorities. The official reason for Mieli's trip was a celebration of the chemist and historian of chemistry Marcelin Berthelot, but in fact, he wrote, his objective was to organize his removal to Paris.85
Mieli's letter to Sarton leaves no doubt about his feelings towards the Fascist government, in his words ‘a gang of criminals’ who had eliminated all opposition through murder, convictions and internal exile. He told Sarton about the ability of the police to arrest and deport at will, and the judiciary's complete lack of independence. Indeed, he stressed that the Fascist leaders and Il Duce in particular, with their ‘ignorance and arrogance’, were meddling in everything, including, crucially, education and scientific research. Mieli lamented the ever greater influence that the Vatican and the Jesuits in particular exerted on the cultural and social life of Italy, through the support of the regime. At this stage, the Vatican had not yet recognized the Italian State, and indeed, between 1874 and 1919 it had even forbidden Italian Catholics to take part in the political life of their country. It was Mussolini who, in 1929, would reach a wide-ranging agreement with the Vatican (Patti Lateranensi). For Mieli, this alliance between Fascism and Catholicism spelt doom for freedom of research and thought, especially in the fields covered by Rassegna. Moreover, he condemned in the strongest terms the ‘extremely ignorant’ Mussolini (‘a much worse tyrant than Nero’), and his habit of ‘making up scientific theories’ and imposing them as ‘Fascist science’.
In his letter to Sarton, Mieli does not mention Rassegna; his collaboration with Sarton was all about history of science. However, the study of sexuality was not far from his mind; indeed he singled out the government's demographic policy for particular criticism. He deemed this policy to be dangerously wrong: it would create overpopulation which would in turn lead to serious problems for the country. Mussolini's speech on demography was printed in Rassegna in August 1927, just months before Mieli's letter to Sarton, in which he explicitly wrote that it was dangerous to speak against such demographic policy. Indeed, he expanded on the subject of the peril of opposing any of Mussolini's ideas: not even his Fascist associates, Mieli argued, were safe from ‘this monster’, who ‘tries not only to sideline’ but indeed ‘to destroy’ anyone who just slightly annoyed him.86 Mieli echoed some of these sentiments in a letter to the sexologist Moll in April 1928, again from Paris. To Moll, Mieli wrote that in Italy people could also be persecuted for completely private reasons.87 It is reasonable to assume that he was hinting at the persecution of homosexuals, which the Fascist regime was carrying out despite the absence of legislation on homosexuality.88
That the open debate fostered by Rassegna was a problem for the regime is demonstrated by the take-over of the journal. Although Mieli's name appears on the frontispiece as one of the editors until 1930, in fact he stopped being an editor in 1928, when he left Italy.89 In 1930, the political police described Mieli as an ‘opponent of the regime and above all of its demographic policy’.90 Mieli did not take the decision to leave Italy lightly; in 1927 he wrote to Sarton that it would be difficult for him to rebuild his life. He thought that at the time the police were not keeping him under very close surveillance.91 He was almost certainly right: the police dossier on him resumed only in early 1929, when he had been in Paris for some months. Even in exile, Mieli could not escape having to deal with Italian authorities, for he needed to renew his passport or validate it for particular countries to which he intended to travel. Mieli's visits to the Italian consulate in Paris prompted a flurry of correspondence about him. On his first visit, in 1930, his passport was held while the consulate contacted the authorities in Italy. Mieli had to undergo an interview in which he declared that he had not been involved in politics for thirty years, and that indeed he was promoting ‘Italianism’ (italianità) within the International Committee for the History of Science. The authorities were aware that he kept giving them as his home address 12 rue Colbert, which they believed to be an office connected with the Bibliothèque nationale. It was in fact the headquarters of the Centre de synthèse.92
Thenceforth Mieli stayed away not only from politics but also from the study of sexuality that so had enraged the Fascist regime. The regime had forced him first to accept an article by Mussolini, then to relinquish editorial control of his journal and finally to abandon both Rassegna and Italy. This had a great impact not only on Mieli's life, but on the future of the study of sexuality in Italy and indeed on public debate about such matters.
APPARENT AND HIDDEN REASONS FOR CHANGES OF PLACE AND AGENDA
Out of prudence, or fear, Mieli was rather reticent about the grave difficulties that he encountered in his life. In his 1943–8 piece he only vaguely mentioned some disappointment with the socialist movement, giving no details. If the secret police reports are to be trusted, and I think on this occasion they are, his homosexuality made his continued militancy impossible. This connection between his homosexuality and the interruption of his political activity has been largely overlooked.
He decided to replace political militancy with a programme of public debate on sexuality and sex education, carried out in the spirit of ‘love, justice, and knowledge’.93 When he abandoned that programme too, and left Italy, he decided to reveal his reasons only to a very select group of people, who incidentally did not know much about Mieli's life in Italy. The public acceptance of the Fascist regime that he showed when privately he criticized it and planned to escape from it has not helped clarity. He hid the pressure he was under so well that even his close associates in France seem not to have known what situation he had left in Italy, nor even his commitment to sex studies. His flight from France was equally secretive. Hélène Metzger, with whom he worked for ten years at the Centre de synthèse, was hurt and disconcerted, as she had not been informed of his departure to Argentina, nor did she receive any news from him.94 When planning to leave Argentina, Mieli had a somewhat different attitude, partly because of the different international situation, but perhaps more importantly because he had less to lose, and very little to hope for.
Mieli's obituaries do not mention that his involvement with Rassegna ended rather abruptly when he left Italy. In his seventeen-page obituary, Pierre Sergescu (who took over the directorship of the International Committee after Mieli's death) only mentioned Rassegna's title and editor, without any further information. He also erroneously wrote that Mieli was the secretary of SIGE.95 Andrea Corsini, the co-founder of Florence's Museum of History of Science (1930), did not mention Rassegna at all.96 In his case, however, it is hard to believe that he did not know Rassegna. Corsini knew Mieli in his Italian period and remembered him as ‘one of earliest and most tireless’ associates in setting up the Italian Society for the History of Medical and Natural Sciences.97 Corsini was on the management committee of this Society, and its president from 1940; from 1923 he directed its organ, the Rivista di storia delle scienze mediche e naturali, in which Mieli had published several articles. Corsini wrote that he had no occasion to see Mieli after he left ‘after the past war’, by which, ambiguously, he must mean the First World War.98 Corsini must, however, had some contact with Mieli, as he published in Archeion, and in 1930 was elected corresponding member of the International Committee, directed by Mieli from Paris. It was Mieli who nominated Corsini for election.99 Corsini commented that Mieli had many difficulties in his life, and mentioned two of them: poor health and racial persecution. The latter seems to be somewhat off the target. Mieli did not even mention that he was Jewish, as far as I am aware, and the only mention by Mieli of anti-Semitism that I have read was in relation to the Argentine government after the 1943 coup d’état. For the Italian authorities it became relevant that he was Jewish only in 1939, when he had long left Italy.100 His being Jewish must on the other hand have played a part in his decision to leave Europe in 1939, especially as Italy was passing anti-Semitic laws and was forging an alliance with Germany. What is really remarkable, however, is that Corsini, writing in 1950, did not mention Fascism as one of Mieli's ‘difficulties’. Henry Sigerist, who was close to Mieli, stressed that Mieli was victim of Fascism, not just once but ‘three times’.101
More recent accounts of Mieli's life and activities hardly consider the connection between his homosexuality and the end of his political career,102 nor do they discuss how the Fascists seized Rassegna and how, as a result, Mieli gave up his engagement with sex studies. Indeed, when it is mentioned at all that Mieli left Rassegna's editorship, the reason given is his removal to France.103 This view swaps cause and effect, and ignores the decisive role of the Fascist regime. It has been generally overlooked that the Italian Fascist regime, without appearing to do so, took control of the most important Italian source of information and debate on sexuality, in order to destroy any opposition to its demographic policies.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Archives referred to:
ACS: Archivio centrale di Stato, Rome. Fascicolo del casellario giudiziario, ‘Aldo Mieli’. (Judicial register, file ‘Aldo Mieli’.)
ACS/PP: Archivio centrale di Stato, Rome. Polizia politica, fascicoli personali (Political police, personal files), 834 ‘Aldo Mieli’.
HL: Houghton Library, Harvard College, Sarton Papers, bMS Am 1803/1803.1.
YUL: Yale University Library, Sigerist Papers (788).
AMCMA: The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Henry E. Sigerist Collection, 3.1.
1 Aldo Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques sous forme de préface à un panorama général d'Histoire des Sciences’, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences 1, 1947–8.
2 See for instance Ahmad Y. al Hassan Gabarin, ‘Introducing History of Science in the Curricula of Higher Education in Islamic Countries’, Conférence Internationale sur l'Histoire des Sciences dans l'Enseignement de l'Histoire des Sciences dans les Universités des Pays Arabes et Musulmans, 2005, UNESCO, Paris, p. 2.
3 For Mieli's publications, see José Babini, ‘Para una bibliografia de Aldo Mieli’, Physis 21, 1979.
4 Massimo Bucciantini, ‘George Sarton e Aldo Mieli: bibliografia e concezioni della scienza a confronto’, Nuncius: Annali di storia della scienza 2: 2, 1987, p. 230; Ferdinando Abbri and P. Rossi, ‘History of Science in Italy’, Isis 77, 1986, p. 214.
5 Giovanni Dall'Orto, ‘Mieli, Aldo (1879–1950)’, in Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, London, 2002.
6 Aldo Mieli, Letter to Sarton, 1 July 1942, HL.
7 George Sarton, Letter to Mieli, 17 July 1944, HL.
8 Gad Freudenthal, ‘Hélène Metzger: Eléments de biographie’, in Etudes sur/ Studies on Hélène Metzger, ed. Gad Freudenthal, Leiden, 1990, p. 204.
9 See Section d'histoire des sciences, ‘Communications officielles’, Archeion 19, 1937, p. 402.
10 As he called it: see Aldo Mieli, ‘Préface’, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences 1, 1947–8, p. 7.
11 Archivio di storia della scienza had its name changed to Archeion in 1927, and to Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences in 1947–8. For simplicity I will call it Archeion regardless of the date.
12 For Mieli's activities in Argentina, see: José Babini, ‘Aldo Mieli y la historia de la ciencia en Argentina’, Physis 4, 1962; Cortéz Plá, ‘Aldo Mieli en la Argentina’, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences 3, 1950.
13 Mieli, Letter to Sigerist, no date, but text reveals it to be from 1943, YUL.
14 As previous note. See also Sigerist, Letter to Sarton of 23 Sept. 1943, HL.
15 Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques’, pp. 494–5.
16 As Sigerist called it: letter to Sarton of 24 March 1955, HL.
17 Joseph Needham and Armando Cortesao, ‘UNESCO and the History of Science’, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences 1, 1947–8; Pierre Sergescu, ‘Aldo Mieli’, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences 3, 1950, p. 533. UNESCO's funding was slashed a few years later, see: F. Bodenheimer, Letter to Sarton of 11 Sept. 1950, HL.
18 Mieli, Letters to Sarton of 10 March 1946, 17 Oct. 1946, 14 April 1949, 25 June 1949; Sigerist, Letter to Sarton, 12 Oct. 1944, HL. See also Mieli, Letters to Sarton of 14 May 1941, 7 July 1942, HL. For Mieli's life in Argentina, see his letters to Sigerist of 20 May 1946, 25 Oct. 1946; and Sigerist, Letter to Mieli of 7 June 1946, AMCMA.
19 Mieli, Letter to Sarton of 25 June 1949, HL.
20 See Antonio Di Meo, ‘Aldo Mieli e la storia della chimica in Italia’, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences 36, 1986; Antonio Di Meo, ‘Aldo Mieli: La storia della scienza fra “programma nazionale” e “internazionalismo” ’, in Cultura ebraica e cultura scientifica in Italia, ed. Antonio Di Meo, Roma, 1994; Ferdinando Abbri, ‘L'opera di Lavoisier nell'interpretazione di Aldo Mieli’, Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze 7: 1, 1982; Babini, ‘Aldo Mieli y la historia de la ciencia en Argentina’; Lucia Tosi, ‘La trayectoria de Aldo Mieli en el Centre international de synthèse’, Saber y Tiempo 4, 1997; Claudio Pogliano, ‘Aldo Mieli, storico della scienza (1879–1950)’, Belfagor 38, 1983; Bucciantini, ‘George Sarton e Aldo Mieli: bibliografia e concezioni della scienza a confronto’; Cristina Chimisso, Writing the History of the Mind: Philosophy and Science in France, 1900 to 1960s, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 100–7.
21 See Sergescu, ‘Aldo Mieli’; Andrea Corsini, ‘Aldo Mieli’, Rivista di storia delle scienze mediche e naturali 41: 1, 1950.
22 ‘Cenno biografico al 30 giugno 1901’ (Short biography to 30 June 1901), ACS.
23 Mieli's birth certificate, Fascicolo della prefettura di Siena; ‘Cenno biografico al 30 giugno 1901’, ACS.
24 Daniele Angeli, ‘Mostra fotografica “Al suono della lumaca, immagini della memoria” ’, in Imago Literary Supplement (n.d.), www.unisi.it/lettura.scrittura, accessed 21 March 2010.
25 ‘Cenno biografico al 30 giugno 1901’, ACS.
26 Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques’, p. 503.
27 The word used was ‘pederasta’, which was generally synonymous with ‘homosexual’.
28 For a discussion of attitudes towards homosexuality in Italy, see Bruno P. F. Wanrooij, Storia del pudore: la questione sessuale in Italia, 1860–1940, Venezia, 1990, chap. 6.
29 Police report, 1903, ACS.
30 Aldo Mieli, Lavori e scritti, I. 1906–1916 Firenze, 1917, p. 24.
31 Mieli, Lavori e scritti, p. 24.
32 The police did not register any political activity, and, in 1938, a police informer in France confirmed that Mieli was not involved in politics: see Document 2, 24 May 1938, ACS/PP.
33 Mieli, Letter to Sarton of 18 July 1929, HL.
34 Copy of a note by the Political police dated 23 Sept. 1929, marked ‘highly confidential’ (riservatissima); telegram to all Rome questori (police chiefs), and all prefetti (government representatives in the provinces), dated 2 Jan. 1930; Political police note dated 3 Feb. 1932; List of names found in Berneri's address book, ACS.
35 Luigi Di Lembo, Guerra di classe e lotta umana: l'anarchismo in Italia dal biennio rosso alla guerra di Spagna (1919–1939), Pisa, 2001, p. 18.
36 Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques’, p. 503.
37 For Prampolini's speeches at Colle Val d'Elsa, and La Martinella, see La società e il suo futuro. Un giornale e la sua città: La Martinella 1884–1984, Firenze, 1985. The most famous of Prampolini's speeches is La predica di Natale, Milano: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli [1897].
38 See ‘Bollettino delle ricerche’, 6 Jan. 1930, 3 July1930, ACS.
39 Aldo Mieli, ‘Un viaggio in Germania’, Archivio di storia della scienza 7, 1926, p. 344.
40 Note from Prefettura di Siena, 9 Aug.1909, ACS; Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques’, p. 498.
41 Babini, ‘Aldo Mieli y la historia de la ciencia en Argentina’, p. 75.
42 For Mieli's efforts in promoting history of science, see Aldo Mieli, ‘Per promuovere la storia della scienza’, Rivista di storia critica delle scienza mediche e naturali 5, 1914; Aldo Mieli, ‘Sul concetto di storia della scienza’, Rivista di storia critica delle scienza mediche e naturali 7, 1916; Abbri and Rossi, ‘History of Science in Italy’, p. 213.
43 See Aldo Mieli, ‘La storia della scienza in Italia (Prolusione ad un corso di Storia delle scienze, tenuta nella R. Università di Perugia il giorno 9 marzo 1926)’, Archivio di storia della scienza 7, 1926.
44 The list of donors appeared in Archeion, see for instance Aldo Mieli, ‘La création du Comité International d'Histoire des Sciences et son activité actuelle’, Archeion 14, 1932.
45 Aldo Mieli, n.t., Archivio di storia della scienza 1, 1919–1920, pp. iii-iv.
46 Aldo Mieli, n.t., Archivio di storia della scienza 3, 1922, p. 5.
47 Aldo Mieli, n.t., Archeion 8, 1927; for Interlingua, see Giuseppe Peano, Exemplo de Interlingua cum Vocabulario Interlingua Latino-Italiano-Français-Deutsch, Cavoretto-Torino, 1913.
48 For Mieli's planning of this organization, see his letter to Sarton of 4 Nov. 1927, HL.
49 Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques’, p. 499.
50 Plá, ‘Aldo Mieli en la Argentina’, p. 909.
51 For a comparison of Mieli's and Sarton's conceptions of the history of science, see Bucciantini, ‘George Sarton e Aldo Mieli’.
52 Aldo Mieli, Manuale di storia della scienza. Antichità, Roma, 1925 (French revised edn: Aldo Mieli and Pierre Brunet, Histoire des sciences: Antiquité, Paris, 1935; Spanish edn published in 1945); Aldo Mieli, Gli scienziati italiani dall'inizio del Medioevo ai nostri giorni, Roma 1921; Aldo Mieli, La science arabe et son rôle dans l’évolution scientifique mondiale, Leiden, 1938; Aldo Mieli, Lavoisier, Genova, 1916.
53 Aldo Mieli, ‘Il tricentenario dei “Discorsi” di Galileo Galilei’, Archeion 21, 1938.
54 Anonymous, ‘Congresso internationale per la riforma sessuale’, Rassegna di studi sessuali 1: 4, 1921.
55 Mieli, ‘Un viaggio in Germania’, p. 344.
56 Aldo Mieli, ‘Patologia sessuale’, Rassegna di studi sessuali 1: 2, 1921. The vast library and archive of Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research, founded in 1919 in Berlin, were burnt down by the Nazis in 1933. See Cornelie Usborne, ‘Hirschfeld, Magnus’, in Dizionario biografico della Storia della Medicina e delle Scienza Naturali, ed. Roy Porter, Milano, 1987.
57 Mieli, ‘Patologia sessuale’, p. 93.
58 Mieli, ‘Un viaggio in Germania’, p. 345.
59 Charlotte Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: a Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology London, 1986, p. 52.
60 Chiappini was born on 2 June 1899 (Questura di Roma, Letter to Interior Ministry, 19 March 1929, ACS).
61 Mieli, ‘Un viaggio in Germania’, pp. 345–6.
62 ‘Relazione su Bai’, 1933, ACS.
63 Questura di Roma, letter to Interior Ministry, 19 March 1929, ACS.
64 Mieli, Letter to Sarton of 17 Oct. 1946, HL.
65 La Direzione, ‘Ai lettori’, Rassegna di studi sessuali 1: 1, 1921.
66 Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques’, p. 504, p. 111.
67 Carola Susani, ‘Una critica della norma nell'Italia del fascismo’, in Le parole e la storia: Ricerche su omosessualità e cultura, ed. Enrico Venturelli, Bologna, 1991.
68 The real identity of Proteus is uncertain. The two current hypotheses are either Mieli himself or the endocrinologist (and Fascist) Nicola Pende. I have strong doubts about both: the former because neither Mieli's ideas nor his writing style overlap closely enough with those of Proteus and because Proteus identifies himself as a biologist. For the identification with Pende, I share Benadusi's doubts, see Lorenzo Benadusi, Il nemico dell'uomo nuovo: l'omosessualità nell'esperimento totalitario fascista, Milano, 2005, p. 72.
69 See Benadusi, Il nemico dell'uomo nuovo, especially chapters 1–2.
70 Quoted in Francesco Cassata, Molti, sani e forti: l'eugenetica in Italia, Torino, 2006, p. 108.
71 Aldo Mieli, ‘Note in margine’, Rassegna di studi sessuali 4: 1, 1924.
72 See Claudia Mantovani, Rigenerare la società: l'eugenetica in Italia dalle origini ottocentesche agli anni Trenta, Soveria Mannelli, 2004, p. 238.
73 Claudio Pogliano, ‘Eugenistas, pero con prudencia’, Asclepio 51: 2, 1999, pp. 110ff; Mantovani, Rigenerare la società, p. 248.
74 Carl Ipsen, Dictating Demography: the Problem of Population in Fascist Italy, Cambridge, 1996, p. 185.
75 Cassata, Molti, sani e forti, pp. 79–81.
76 Cassata, Molti, sani e forti, pp. 96–7.
77 ‘Notizie’, Rassegna di studi sessuali 3: 6, 1923, pp. 437–8.
78 Ipsen, Dictating Demography, pp. 73–5.
79 Mantovani, Rigenerare la società, p. 292. Mantovani reproduces the full text of Mussolini's telegram.
80 Monica Galfré, Il regime degli editori: libri, scuola e fascismo, Roma, 2005, pp. 8, 91–5.
81 Benito Mussolini, ‘Il programma demografico in Italia del Governo Nazionale’, Rassegna di studi sessuali 7: 2, 1927.
82 Cassata, Molti, sani e forti, p. 95.
83 Aldo Mieli, n.t., Archivio di storia della scienza 7: 1, 1926.
84 See for instance Benadusi, Il nemico dell'uomo nuovo, pp. 83–4.
85 Mieli, Letter to Sarton of 4 Nov. 1927, HL.
86 As previous note.
87 Quoted in Volkmar Sigusch, ‘Aldo Mielis Emigration aus dem faschistischen Italien. Ein bisher unveröffentlichter Briefwechsel zwischen Aldo Mieli und Albert Moll’, Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung 223, 2009, p. 211.
88 For the persecution of homosexuals, see Benadusi, Il nemico dell'uomo nuovo.
89 Mieli, ‘Digressions autobiographiques’, p. 496.
90 Note by the Political police to the Divisione Affari Generali e riservati, 9 Aug. 1930, ACS. Bizarrely, in this note Mieli is described as the editor of a journal of ‘Somali’ [sic] studies, rather than sex (‘sessuali’) studies.
91 Mieli, Letter to Sarton of 4 Nov. 1927, HL.
92 Telegram from the Italian Embassy in Paris, 11 Feb. 1930; telegram from the Italian Consulate in Paris to the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, copied to the Italian Embassy in Paris, 3 July 1930, ACS.
93 La Direzione, ‘Ai lettori’, Rassegna di studi sessuali 1: 1, 1921, p. 4.
94 Hélène Metzger, Letter to Sarton of 26 May 1940, HL. In April 1939, she believed that Mieli was in Argentina just to give some conference papers: see Metzger, Letter to Sarton of 22 April 1939, HL.
95 Pierre Sergescu, ‘Aldo Mieli’, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 3, 1950, p. 526.
96 Corsini, ‘Aldo Mieli’. Later articles do mention Rassegna. Pogliano's biographical article on Mieli, published thirty-three years after his death, refers not only to Rassegna, but also, alone among these articles, to his political activism, although not his election as town councillor, or the police interest in him: Claudio Pogliano, ‘Aldo Mieli, storico della scienza (1879–1950)’, Belfagor 38, 1983. On Corsini, see Museo di Storia della Scienza: catalogo, ed. Mara Miniati, Firenze, 1991, pp. 5–6, 41.
97 Corsini, ‘Aldo Mieli’.
98 Corsini, ‘Aldo Mieli’, p. 111.
99 Mieli, Letter to Sarton of 30 Oct. 1929, HL; for Corsini's election, see Comité International d'Histoire des Sciences, ‘Election des nouveaux membres’, Archeion 12, 1931.
100 See Note by Italian Embassy in Buenos Aires to Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 14 June 1939, in which Mieli for the first time becomes ‘the Jew Mieli’, ACS.
101 Sigerist, Letter to Schiaffino of 19 April 1944, AMCMA.
102 Susani mentions the reasons by summarizing the police report in a footnote: Susani, ‘Una critica della norma nell'Italia del fascismo’, p. 116, fn 2.
103 Pogliano, ‘Aldo Mieli, storico della scienza (1879–1950)’, p. 551.
