Sent to Berlin for L'Unione Sarda in August 1961. A turning point in the history of the twentieth century. Giuseppe Fiori is a witness who tells. “I saw the fences that block the road to freedom being stretched out”. The wall that divides the German city and the world in two is built.
Di Fiori is the twentieth anniversary of his death (in Rome on April 17, 2003) and the centenary of his birth (January 27, 1923 in Silanus but the family roots are in Cuglieri). There is another occasion to remember this. Laterza has in fact just reprinted "Casa Rosselli", published in 1999, the story of a family that is the beating heart of the history of anti-fascism. A long cursus honorum in journalism from the beginning with L'Unione (envoy, political notist and film critic) up to Rai (envoy of TV7, deputy director and columnist of Tg2), to the direction of Paese Sera. Then, according to an always coherent trajectory, he devoted himself body and soul to politics over the years at Palazzo Madama on the benches of the Independent Left for three legislatures.
The books
All this alongside the writing and the commitment poured into the books. Thoughts, reflections, research that represent a legacy of great value. Here are "Sonetaula", "Barons in the lagoon", "The society of malaise", the biographies of Antonio Gramsci, Emilio Lussu (who becomes the Cavaliere dei Rossomori), Ernesto Rossi, Enrico Berlinguer, the life of the anarchist Michele Schirru, " The seller” on the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, “Uomini ex”. Jacopo Onnis, editor of Tgr Sardegna for many years, dedicated the volume “The courage of the truth” to him ten years ago. The civil Italy of Giuseppe Fiori” (Cuec) in which thirty protagonists of information, culture, entertainment, politics, recall the human and professional experience of a great witness of the twentieth century.
«From the interviews (among others Corrado Stajano, Nello Ajello, Furio Colombo, Manlio Brigaglia, Stefano Rodotà, Renzo Arbore, Goffredo Fofi, Emanuele Macaluso, Walter Veltroni) - explains Onnis - the portrait of a very rich and complex personality emerges. But there is a thread that binds everything: a DNA never denied. Chronicler of race: these are its roots. And when in 1992 he decided not to run again for the Senate, he wrote a letter to PDS secretary Achille Occhetto thanking the party for having offered him the privilege of being a special envoy within the institutions »
Even on the small screen it leaves its mark. An authoritative presence. In the Sunday TG2, at 13, he opens the live editorials. “His were harpooning, not consoling sermons”, underlines Walter Veltroni in his testimony. A few minutes after the Fiori editorial, another revolution of the Second Network started at 1.30 pm: Renzo Arbore's afternoon, "Altra Domenica", which soon became a cult programme.
The relationship with the island
«As a Sardinian - concludes Jacopo Onnis - he was convinced that the Sardinians could only achieve their redemption if they were able to identify their mistakes and weaknesses. His values are the same as those of the protagonists of his biographies. He was guided by a very strong moral intransigence: he would never have sold out his freedom. It is not yet remembered how much it deserves. Often a foreigner at home. He was looking for another Italy, a civil and democratic Italy".
In L'Unione of 19 August 1961, from Berlin, Giuseppe Fiori wrote: "In the early hours of the day the iron curtain which had remained suspended in mid-air for years between the two sectors of the city had suddenly collapsed, dramatically splitting the community of the East from that of the West, depriving 17 million East Germans of the last possibility of anchorage with the flight to freedom".