Enrico De Nicola

• 1. Introduction

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  Enrico De Nicola was so reluctant to lead his country that a journalist had to beg him in print to make up his mind. When the newly elected Constituent Assembly of Italy gathered in June 1946 to choose a provisional head of state, De Nicola kept wavering, unsure whether to accept the nomination. Giulio Andreotti, who was there and would later recall the episode vividly, remembered that the journalist Manlio Lupinacci finally published an appeal in the pages of Il Giornale d'Italia: "Your Excellency, please, decide to decide if you can accept to accept." De Nicola did accept. He received roughly 80% of the votes at the first round. That scene captures the paradox of Enrico De Nicola: a man described by those who knew him as possessed of great modesty, who nevertheless stood at the centre of some of the most consequential moments in twentieth-century Italian history. Born in Naples on the 9th of November 1877, he would go on to serve as the first President of the Italian Republic when the new constitution took effect on the 1st of January 1948. How did a penal lawyer who had spent years refusing to sit in the Senate end up as the inaugural head of state of a reborn republic? The answer runs through a courtroom, a fascist takeover, a wartime collapse, and a national referendum.

• 2. The Lawyer in Politics

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  De Nicola graduated from the University of Naples in 1896 and built a reputation as a penal lawyer before politics drew him in. He was a Liberal, and he won his first seat as a deputy in 1909. From 1913 to 1921 he held a series of minor governmental posts, including Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Giolitti government, a role he occupied from November 1913 to March 1914. He later served as Under-Secretary of State for the Treasury in the Orlando cabinet between January and June 1919. His most prominent role in those years came on the 26th of June 1920, when he was elected speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, a post he held until January 1924. The rise of fascism ended that chapter. When Mussolini's movement took hold, De Nicola withdrew entirely from political life and returned to his law practice. King Victor Emmanuel III appointed him to the Senate in 1929, but De Nicola refused to take his seat and never participated in the Assembly's work. His silence during the fascist years was its own statement, and it preserved a kind of moral standing that would matter enormously once the regime collapsed.

• 3. The Fall of Fascism and the Transition

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  After Benito Mussolini fell from power in 1943, the Italian monarchy faced an urgent problem: how to separate itself from its long collaboration with the fascist regime. De Nicola emerged as perhaps the most influential mediator in the transition that followed. Victor Emmanuel III manoeuvred his son Umberto into a new role as Lieutenant-General of the Realm, transferring most of the functions of the sovereign to him. Victor Emmanuel later abdicated, Umberto became King Umberto II, and a Constitutional Referendum was called. The republicans won. When Umberto II was exiled and left Italy, Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi stepped in as acting head of state for a few weeks. The newly elected Constituent Assembly then turned to De Nicola. His election as Provisional Head of State on the 28th of June 1946, at the first round with roughly 80% of the votes, was a signal of near-universal confidence. The hesitation that required Lupinacci's public appeal stood in stark contrast to the breadth of support De Nicola commanded from across the major political parties.

• 4. Resignation and Return

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  On the 25th of June 1947, De Nicola resigned as Provisional Head of State, citing his health. The Constituent Assembly's response was immediate: it re-elected him the very next day. The delegates read in his resignation not a reason to replace him but a demonstration of the nobility and humility that made him the right man for the role. He accepted again. When the Italian Constitution came into force, his title changed on the 1st of January 1948: he became formally and constitutionally the President of the Italian Republic, the first person to hold that title. He chose not to stand as a candidate in the first full constitutional presidential election, held the following May. Luigi Einaudi won that election and took up residence at the Quirinale, the formal seat of the Italian presidency.

• 5. After the Presidency

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  De Nicola did not retire from public life when Einaudi succeeded him. As a former head of state, he became a senator for life in 1948. He was subsequently elected President of the Senate, and later President of the Constitutional Court. He never married and had no children. He died at Torre del Greco, in the province of Naples, on the 1st of October 1959, at the age of eighty-one. Among the honours he received were the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity and the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, awarded in 1956. His career traced an unusual arc: he had held the speakership of the Chamber of Deputies decades before the republic existed, then stepped away entirely during the fascist period, and returned to occupy the highest offices a democratic Italy could offer, including the presidency, the Senate presidency, and the chairmanship of the court tasked with interpreting the constitution he had helped inaugurate.