Uguccione Ranieri Bourbon del Monte di Sorbello (22 February 1906 – 28 May 1969), better known as Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello, or simply Uguccione Ranieri, was an Italian scholar, journalist and writer; he was also a war hero and a Public Administration official and director at the Ministry of Popular Culture, Tourism and Entertainment based at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the noble Ranieri Bourbon di Sorbello family, with the title of marquis of Sorbello and count of Civitella.
Early life and education Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello was the second son of the marquis Ruggero V Ranieri Bourbon di Sorbello (1864-1946) and an american woman, Romeyne Robert (1877-1951). Uguccione’s earliest schooling followed the Montessori method, in keeping with the wishes of his mother, who was active in the field of social promotion and was the founder of a rural school inspired by Montessori educational practices.Claudia Pazzini, Coltivare l'immaginario. Letture e albi illustrati dei bambini di Palazzo Sorbello, Perugia, Fondazione Ranieri di Sorbello, 2019, pp. 46-47. In 1924 he enrolled in law school in Rome, and he began to collaborate with various Roman periodicals. In 1926 he interrupted his university studies to do military service, initially at the Scuola Allievi Ufficiali of Rome (anti-aircraft artillery department) and later at Forte Belvedere in Florence, where he rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant.
In 1928 he graduated in Rome with a degree in Law, and the following year he earned a second degree in Political Science from the University of Florence. He immediately began working as a clerk with a Roman law firm, but it was a short-lived experience. Uguccione soon abandoned the idea of becoming a lawyer in order to follow his passion for literature and the humanities. The decision to abandon his legal career was not welcomed by his father, marquis Ruggero Bourbon di Sorbello, who cut off his support with the clear intention of making his son come to his senses, forcing him to return to Perugia, the city where the family lived. It was in this climate of generational tension that the conditions would ripen for a decision that would mark a fundamental turning point in Uguccione’s life: leaving Italy to move to the United States.
The first period in the United States (1930-1936)
After a first exploratory trip to the United States in 1929 to gather information and check on work opportunities at North American universities, in the 1930-31 academic year Uguccione obtained a position as an instructor of Italian language and literature in the Italian Department of Yale University. Having entered the cultural life of the town of New Haven, Connecticut, he was active in the Yale Italian Society and with the city’s Circolo Italiano, where he was invited to hold several conferences on Italian art and literature. Starting in 1932, the Circolo Italiano of Boston invited him to lecture regularly on Italian literature. Interested in theater as a means for promoting the learning of the italian language, he wrote and staged, in collaboration with the University of Yale theater company, the one-act comedy Con le signore c'è più gusto (It’s More Fun with Ladies), performed in italian by Yale students on May 3, 1934. Two years later the play was published by Italian Publishers in New York.In this publication, probably on Uguccione’s instructions, the unusual typographic choice was made insert the main stress accent marks not only on truncated words, but also on proparoxytone words. As we read in the author’s introductory note, this made “the Italian language perfectly pronounceable at first sight.” See Uguccione Ranieri, Con le signore c'è più gusto, New York, Italian Publishers, 1936.
From 1934 to 1936 Uguccione also taught at the Italian Summer School at Middlebury College, where he developed a course called “Modern Italy in Word and Thought.”He would be remembered for his efforts as a “man of many talents.” See Stephen A. Freeman, The Middlebury College. Foreign Language School 1915-1970. The Story of a Unique Idea, Middlebury, Vermont, Middlebury College Press, 1975, pp. 124-125. He made the acquaintance of Giuseppe Prezzolini, then professor of Italian Literature at Columbia University and director of the Casa Italiana from 1930 to 1940, who invited him to join the editorial staff of Casa Italiana’s Giornalino, a magazine for students and teachers of Italian in the United States. His interest in journalism was also expressed in his editorial contributions to two magazines, both publications of the Italy-America Society: Italy America Monthly and Italy America Review, of which he was managing editor in 1936.
The MinCulPop years and the anti-Fascist conspiracy Returning to Italy in 1937, Uguccione began working with a temporary contract at the newly created Ministry of Popular Culture (MinCulPop); he was then hired the following year, with the title of First Secretary. He worked specifically with radio broadcasts in English, relations with the foreign press, and censorship. Although he was becoming increasingly intolerant of Mussolini’s regime, he was forced to keep his job out of economic necessity, eventually leaving his duties with the radio office and transferring to the foreign press general management, where he handled the administrative and personal affairs of foreign journalists, especially american journalists who remained in Italy until Mussolini’s declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941.
He was called back to military service in November 1942 and sent to the base in Caserta, returning to Rome shortly afterward through the direct involvement of Princess Marie-José of Savoy, who most likely acted at the request of Uguccione’s mother, Romeyne Robert, who was acquainted with the princess. Uguccione later took part in the anti-Fascist conspiracy that revolved around the figure of Marie-José. Uguccione later recalled in some of his autobiographical writings the key role played by Marie-José:
(From writings by Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello.Antonella Valoroso and Ruggero Ranieri, Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello. Un intellettuale tra due mondi, Perugia, Morlacchi Editore, 2019, pp. 53-54.)
Edgardo Sogno also recalled how, in the spring of 1943, he, Uguccione and a group of liberal monarchists wrote an appeal to the king, asking him to depose Mussolini.Edgardo Sogno and Aldo Cazzullo, Testamento di un anticomunista. Dalla Resistenza al "golpe bianco", Milan, Mondadori, 2000, pp. 33-34. Despite this, according to Sogno, Uguccione had long since lost faith in the monarchy, and subsequent events only confirmed his republican convictions. These would emerge strongly in the period immediately following the war, when Uguccione publicly sided with the Republic on the occasion of the institutional referendum held on Sunday and Monday, June 2–3, 1946 to choose whether Italy would remain a monarchy or become a republic after World War II.
Involvement with the Allies (1943-45)
Following the announcement of the armistice on September 8, 1943, Uguccione deserted, heading south and taking refuge at the villa of his friends Zeno and Andreola Vinci in Cupra Marittima. On the night of October 5 he carried out his first mission, rescuing a group of Jewish fugitives in Allied territory, using a makeshift boat to reach the Tremiti Islands.Elena Dundovich and Ruggero Ranieri, Scritti scelti di Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello 1906-1969, Firenze, Leo S. Olschki, 2004, pp. 69-72. With the consent of the Italian General Staff, Uguccione joined the Allied IS 9, an extension of the British MI9, or Military Intelligence Section 9, and its American counterpart. The MI9 was created in December 1940 with the task of supporting European resistance fighters in the territories occupied by the Nazi/Fascists to recover Allied soldiers in enemy territory, as well as to communicate with prisoners in POW camps, providing them with every possible assistance. The IS9, often called the A-Force in the Mediterranean zone, had the specific mission of helping Allied prisoners to escape, which was also done through the training of special agents to be sent into enemy territory. The IS9 network developed its activities in various parts of the Italian peninsula, especially along the Eastern Alps, where it was mainly a question of rescuing the crews of Allied bombers shot down by enemy antiaircraft, and in the areas between the Marche and Abruzzi regions, where there was a high concentration of escaped prisoners.There were three large camps for Allied prisoners in the Marches: at Sforzacosta, near Macerata; at Monte Urano, near Fermo; and at Servigliano, in the valley of the Tenna river.
Uguccione remained in the Marche region from the winter of 1943 to the spring of 1944 to organize an escape route (“Ratline”), which helped hundreds of Allied prisoners (about 900 British/American soldiers, Yugoslav soldiers, Italian refugees, Jews, etc.) to escape.
After the liberation of the Marches, he moved to the Arezzo front, and in July 1944 he participated in the battle of Florence. Later, after hurried training in Brindisi to prepare for a mission in the Alps, on the night between April 4 and 5 he parachuted into the Monte Pizzoc area in the Eastern Alps, together with an English lieutenant and an Italian radio operator (Operation Spider). There, together with the partisans of the Garibaldi “Nino Nannetti” Division, he managed to unite and bring to safety a large group of missing American airmen and to capture more than a thousand German soldiers. In the late stages of the war, he was sent to Austria to organize the first aid to the prison camps abandoned by the Germans in the area between Klagenfurt and Graz, where it was estimated that almost 40,000 Allied soldiers were held. His deeds during the war of liberation earned him commendations and decorations: on his return to Italy, in April 1945, he was decorated with the Silver Medal of Military Valor. In 1949 he was also awarded a bronze medal.
The post-war years
1946-1952: Political involvement
After the war, Uguccione returned to Rome, initially establishing contacts with the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and obtaining several positions in liaison with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before being appointed to the newly-created Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment in 1960. In 1946 Uguccione provided his services as a press officer for the Italian delegation at the Paris Conference, where he translated Alcide De Gasperi’s speech into English for foreign journalists, for which he earned their praise.Indro Montanelli and Mario Cervi, L'Italia della Repubblica: 2 giugno 1946 – 18 aprile 1948, in Bur, Milan, Corriere della Sera, 2018, p. 87.
Uguccione was an active participant in the cultural life of the newly liberated Rome. His small apartment in the capital, at Via dei Due Macelli no. 31, became a sort of intellectual and social hub, frequented by various personalities who constituted, or would constitute, the political, literary and journalistic elite of the post-war period: Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, Ugo Stille, Luigi Barzini, Alberto Moravia, Giannalisa Feltrinelli, Marina and Anna Maria Volpi, the writer Dino Terra, along with various well-known musicians, actors and politicians. Longtime friends included count Edgardo “Eddy” Sogno, Maurizio Lodi-Fè and Indro Montanelli.