Giliana Berneri

Giliana Berneri (Italian) Giliane Berneri (French)
Born	(1919-10-05)5 October 1919 Florence, Tuscany, Kingdom of Italy
Died	19 July 1998 Paris, France
Occupation(s)	Communist libertarian activist Medical doctor
Spouse(s)	Serge Ninn [fr] (real name Jean Senninger)
Children	Hélène Senninger (1950) Franck Senninger [fr] (1955)
Parent(s)	Camillo Berneri Giovanna Berneri

Giliana Berneri or Giliane Berneri (5 October 1919 – 19 July 1998) was a French

Although Giliana pursued her medical studies in Paris with continued energy, the circumstances of her father's death provided her with a compelling motivation to continue with her father's political work, and it is for her political activity that she is more widely remembered.[4]

Political activism

In 1938 Giliana and her sister,

The Second World War ended in May 1945 and Giliana returned to France and married her partner, Jean Senninger [fr]^[1] (generally known as "Serge Ninn") while her sister remained in London with her English anarchist husband Vernon Richards. During the war, their mother Giovanna Berneri had been arrested and deported first to Germany and then to Italy where she had spent most of the war under house arrest. At the first post war anarchist conference, which took place in May 1948 in Paris, the three women were all present, each representing a different country, the mother with the Italian delegation while her daughters represented respectively Britain and France.

Giliane Berneri took French citizenship on 17 October 1947.^[1] She was active in the French libertarian movement until the mid-1950s. In the aftermath of the war she was among the founders of the French Anarchist Federation, along with Maurice Joyeux, Georges Fontenis, Suzy Chevet [fr], Renée Lamberet, Georges Vincey, Aristide Lapeyre, Paul Lapeyre, Maurice Laisant, Solange Dumont, Maurice Fayolle and Roger Caron.

Giliane and her husband were drawn to the Paris-based Sacco and Vanzetti group, which developed into the Kronstadt group within the Anarchist Federation. In 1948 this group comprised "approximately twenty militants and sympathisers belonging to the university [of the Sorbonne], in the metallurgy, buildings, medical and hospital departments, focused the books and instruction"^[5] including Georg K. Glaser and André Prudhommeaux. Her home in the Latin Quarter of Paris was one of those scheduled for police monitoring.

During this period she was a leading figure in the Cercle libertaire des étudiants (Libertarian Students' Circle/ CLE) which organised meetings with leading icons of the left such as André Prudhommeaux, and with writers closely attached to libertarian objectives such as Albert Camus. She worked on the editorial team of the journal Le Libertaire.^[6] Unlike her husband, however, she refused to become involved in the initiatives of Georges Fontenis to create a secret (and manipulative) sub-group within the French Anarchist Federation, to be known by the name "Organisation Pensée Bataille [fr]",^[7] the machinations of which she later, reportedly, denounced.^[1]

During the later 1950s Giliane Berneri became disillusioned by the internal quarrels affecting the French anarchist movement, and her activist contributions to it came to an end.

Personal life

Berneri married Jean Senninger (known as Serge Ninn) in 1945. They had two children, Hélène (born 1950) and Franck (born 1955). Both became doctors, Hélène specialising in paediatrics and Franck in endocrinology and dietology, as well writing novels under the pen name F. Berneri Croce.^[1]

Giliane Berneri died on the 19th July 1998 in Paris.^[1]

Legacy

In 1962, when her mother died, she donated all the family archives to journalist and historian Aurelio Chessa who used them as the basis of a substantial "anarchism archive", the Archivio Famiglia Berneri-Chessa ("Berneri-Chesso Family Archive") which has been accommodated in the Biblioteca Panizzi (Panizzi Library) at Reggio Emilia since 1998.^[8]

References