Mediatori in cerca di legittimazione: Federico e Giovanna Federici

The paper aims to offer a profile of the figure of Federico Federici, lecturer of Italian in Germany before and during the years of the Third Reich, and of his wife Giovanna, a philosopher and translator. It seeks to reconstruct the network of relationships and circumstances that led Federici to act as an Italian mediator for the philosopher Heinrich Rickert, to accredit himself as a translator for Ernst Cassirer, and subsequently to sign in 1937 a volume entitled Nazionalsocialismo, on the political-social and symbolic structure of Nazi Germany. At the same time, it investigates the trajectory of Giovanna, a patient weaver of connections that will lead her and her husband to work for the most prestigious Italian publishing houses. Retracing this path by following the traces left by the Federicis aims to fit into the broader investigation of the controversial status of Italian-German cultural mediation during the years of the Axis.