In the Name of Italy: Nation, Family, and Patriotism in a Fascist Court

Introduction

“By decree of the Prefect of Trieste, issued this 26th day of June 1930, the widow Paulovich’s name is restored to the Italian form Paoli.”1 Asserting her right to maintain her husband’s family name, Luigia Barbarovich Paulovich rejected the Italian form Paoli and launched a legal appeal that challenged fascist authorities working to nationalize the populations in Italy’s eastern borderlands. By the end of 1931, the appeal reached the Administrative Court of the Council of State (Section Four of the Consiglio di Stato) in Rome. Justices at the highest echelons of the fascist judiciary considered the widow’s complaint against the prefect of Trieste and the directive that “restored” her married surname. The appeal was truly extraordinary . Of the tens of thousands of people in Italy’s Adriatic border provinces whose surnames the fascists altered between 1927 and 1943, Paulovich was the second of only a dozen who sought legal redress in Rome. Luigia Barbarovich Paulovich’s case, at the core of this study, offers a window on fascist government officials’ and legal professionals’ response to dynamic conceptions of law, morality, and patriotism. Paulovich’s dispute with local administrative authorities exposes the philosophical dilemmas legal professionals and government representatives faced in the wake of authoritarian takeover and shows how they reconciled liberal training and beliefs with fascist exigencies. It illustrates how, in the climate of shifting perceptions of individual rights and community responsibilities , the Italian legal system and fascist governing system continued to evolve after the “seizure of power,” the crystallization of the dictatorship , and into the “years of consensus.”2 It demonstrates that some individuals saw Mussolini’s government as a change in Italian leadership but refused to accept fascism as a transformation of the Italian system. Maneuvering in the interstices of law, morality, and social expectations, Luigia Paulovich set local officials and national jurists at odds. Her objection to the fascist directive forced legal professionals at the prefectural and national levels to articulate the bounds of the government’s authority in efforts to impose a nationalist agenda. Despite the fascist commitment to Italian nationalism, the court rewarded the elderly widow willing to Introduction 2 introduction stand against the prefect and eager to assert her faith in Italian justice. Amidst the violence that stands as a mark of the fascist government’s efforts to Italianize the border population, Paulovich’s experience appears uncharacteristic as an indication of administrative tolerance and reliance on legal processes. The clash of nationalist perspectives—from Rome (the site of fascist central administration and the Administrative Court), Trieste (Paulovich ’s home and part of the new Italian territories), and Dalmatia (the Paulovich family’s land of origin and “unredeemed” territory over which Italian irredentists sought control)—demonstrates how standards for patriotism , loyalty, and national belonging could vary over time and space even under the eyes of the dictatorship. The superior power and will of the center were clear in the court’s straightforward directive to the prefect of Trieste to void the name restoration decree but, the implications of the ruling were far from clear. While fascist anti-Slavism and political persecution continued, contradictory impulses of the fascist state allowed Paulovich to escape the effects of Italianizing policy. Officials eager to maintain stability promoted the fascist state; judges committed to maintaining legal traditions and precedents cooperated in government and legislative reform; civil servants and authorities at all government levels turned a blind eye to the periodic violence and fascist repression. Yet, those responsible for educating modern fascist citizens and for integration of the borderland remained wedded to social conventions and traditions inherited from the liberal era that idolized loyal Italians and women committed to family, motherhood, and country. The legal ambiguities and contradictions brought to light in Paulovich’s case were not simply an aberration of fascism. Although legality is portrayed often in black and white terms—something is either legal or illegal, within the bounds of law or outside them—understandings of the legality of particular actions or the scope of the law regarding them is subject to interpretation, dependent on individual or collective interpretations of right and wrong under the law. Malleable and even fickle social trends affect interpretations of what constitutes law. Dynamic conceptions of social justice render the law living rather than static, and Western jurisprudence relies on the law’s subjectivity to interpretation and its evolution. introduction 3 Fascism intended to...