Adalgisa Fochi

Educator, writer, feminist activist, and socialist, and the mother of the prominent anarchist intellectual Camillo Berneri.

She was the daughter of Piero Fochi, a Garibaldian doctor who had participated in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand, and Carolina Gallenga, who was more closely aligned with Giuseppe Mazzini. While working as an elementary-school teacher and vacationing in Valtellina, Lombardy, she met Stefano Berneri, a widower with children who worked as a secretary at the municipal office of Corteno Golgi. The two eventually married. On May 20, 1897, their son Camillo Berneri was born, but his parents separated soon afterward.

Because of her work as a teacher, Adalgisa and her son moved frequently, living in cities including Milan, Palermo, Reggio Emilia, and Arezzo. She wrote children's stories, including La penna d'oro (1902) and La scopa di zia Tecla (1904). In 1912, she delivered the lecture L'eredità in relazione alla responsabilità dei genitori at the People's Library of Reggio Emilia, where her son was attending higher school. In 1914, she gave another lecture, Esaminani del sanatorium.

Fochi also published several essays advocating for the rights and protection of abandoned and vulnerable children, including Figli di nessuno, Fanciulli infelici, and Salviamo un fanciullo. In 1927, she published the one-act play Uno stratagemma da affamate.

Her intellectual and cultural work reflected a distinctive combination of Mazzinian republicanism, socialism, anarchism, feminism, and Pestalozzian pedagogy. During the Fascist regime, she refused to swear allegiance to the King, an oath required of state officials, and was consequently forced to abandon both her profession and Italy.

She later joined her son and his companion, Giovanna Caleffi, in Paris, where the couple had been living in exile. There, she devoted herself to teaching and caring for her granddaughters, Maria Luisa and Giliana Berneri. She remained in Paris after the murder of her son, Camillo, who was killed in Barcelona on May 5, 1937.

After the end of the Second World War, Fochi returned to Reggio Emilia. In Italy, she published two books devoted to her son: Con te, figlio mio! (1948), a memoir of Camillo, and La mamma. In difesa di Camillo Berneri. Contro i detrattori e i calunniatori (1951).

Adalgisa Fochi died in Reggio Emilia on August 16, 1957, at the age of 86. In accordance with her wishes, her grave bears only the inscription: “Madre di Camillo” (“Mother of Camillo”).