In una vicenda che copre l’arco di due secoli, una famiglia di ebrei tedeschi divisa tra la Germania e il Vaticano è minacciata dalla furia nazista.
Negli anni bui del regime hitleriano si apre una finestra sulla vita quotidiana a Berlino e sulle disperate vicende di agiati borghesi, ebrei ma laici, travolti da eventi che mai avrebbero creduto possibili. Nelle loro case s’incontreranno Albert Einstein e gli inventori del film sonoro, spiati in segreto dai tedeschi.
Le spie non mancano neppure in Vaticano, dove laWehrmacht controlla il telefono di Pio XII. Sono gli anni della fame e dei soccorsi che arrivano a papa Pacelli, dai tessuti stipati nei Musei vaticani ai barili di baccalà nascosti sotto la cappella Sistina. Le bombe colpiranno anche il piccolo Stato, mentre gli ambasciatori giocano a golf sotto la cupola di San Pietro.
I ricordi del primo “vaticanista” della storia della Santa Sede si congiungono con le cronache del figlio fino ai giorni di Benedetto XVI. Si scoprono molti “altarini”, ma si sfatano leggende che lasciano strascichi di dubbi: non è verosimile che Mussolini fece uccidere Pio XI, come affermava il cardinale Eugène Tisserant.
Non è un romanzo. Sono memorie.
Formato PDF
In a story that spans two centuries, an extended family of German Jews – one half living in Germany and the other whose lives are centered around the Vatican – is threatened by the onslaught of Nazism. Set in the dark years of Hitler’s regime, the book offers a peek into daily life and desperate stories of the well-to-do Jewish middle class of Berlin caught up in events they never thought possible. In their houses one meets Albert Einstein and the inventors of talking movies, people whose private lives were spied upon by the German regime.
Even in the Vatican there is no lack of spies: the Wehrmacht is tapping the private telephone of Pope Pius XII. It was a time of hunger, when food was sent into to the tiny city-state to help feed the pope, when bolts of cloth and other daily necessities were stored in the Vatican Museums and barrels of salted fish were hidden under the Sistine Chapel. Bombs even hit the tiny state but when things were relatively calm, foreign ambassadors from countries at war with Italy – who had taken refuge in the Vatican because they could not stay in Rome – passed their time by playing golf in the shadow of the imposing dome of St Peter’s Basilica.
This book recounts the memories of Giulio Bartoloni, the first “Vaticanista” – the name Italians give to journalists who specialize in Vatican affairs – rounded out by the news reports of his son Bruno up to the present-day pontificate of Benedict XVI. The reader discovers scandals and secrets but many doubtful urban legends are deflated. The possibility that Italian wartime dictator Benito Mussolini had Pope Pius XI killed in 1939 – as Cardinal Eugene Tisserant later asserted – is shown to be highly unlikely.
It is not a novel but an entertaining and moving memoir of a unique family living in a unique period in history.
PDF format
Mauro Pagliai, 2012
Pagine: 256
Caratteristiche: ill. b/n, br.
Formato: 15x21
ISBN: 978-88-564-0178-3
Collana:
Storie del mondo, 12
Settori:
