Giuseppe Dozza (29 November 1901 – 28 December 1974) was an Italian politician, the first

Mayor of Bologna The Mayor of Bologna is an elected politician who, along with the Bologna’s City Council, is accountable for the strategic government of Bologna, the regional capital of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. Overview According to the Italian Constitution, th ...

after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Biography

The resistance

One of the founders of the

Communist Party of Italy The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current ...

, Dozza was immediately persecuted by the

Fascist regime Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

and expatriated in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

in the 1920s. He returned to Italy only in 1943 to participate in the

resistance movement A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objective ...

in his hometown

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

. The

National Liberation Committee The National Liberation Committee ( it, Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, CLN) was a political umbrella organization and the main representative of the Italian resistance movement fighting against Nazi Germany’s forces during the German occup ...

already decided that once

has been freed, Dozza would have become its

Mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well a ...

Member of the Constituent Assembly

In the 1946 general election, Dozza is elected at the

Constituent Assembly A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...

, participating in the drafting of what would later become the

Italian Constitution The Constitution of the Italian Republic ( it, Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana) was enacted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 December 1947, with 453 votes in favour and 62 against. The text, which has since been amended sixteen times, ...

Mayor of Bologna

Once elected

, Dozza began immediately to instil confidence in citizens and encouraged them to participate in the reconstruction of the city. Dozza has committed himself in the autonomous battle of

, demanding more decentralized powers and claiming the financial autonomy of local authorities. Dozza brought solidarity to workers in crisis and equipped the first industrial areas that were the avant-gardes of the

economic boom An economic expansion is an increase in the level of economic activity, and of the goods and services available. It is a period of economic growth as measured by a rise in real GDP. The explanation of fluctuations in aggregate economic activity ...

. Dozza established the tax councils, which combined the need for self-government of

with the principle of "progressive taxation" and with the principle of control of citizens in finding the economic resources. They worked at full speed with transparency and without inflicting too heavy tax burdens on the middle classes and saving the popular classes. In the early 1950s, Dozza's administration also provided a generous sum of money to the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...

, gathering the consensus of the world of culture and that of the productive forces that liked Dozza's plan to fund research on the use of

nuclear energy Nuclear energy may refer to: *Nuclear power, the use of sustained nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to generate heat and electricity * Nuclear binding energy, the energy needed to fuse or split a nucleus of an atom *Nuclear potential energy ...

for peaceful purposes. Dozza saw the solidity of his electoral consent when he won the 1956 local elections against the

Christian Democratic Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...

leader of

Giuseppe Dossetti Giuseppe Dossetti (13 February 1913 – 15 December 1996) was an Italian jurist, a politician, and from 1958 onward, a Catholic priest. Political career Dossetti was born in Genoa, the son of a piedmontese pharmacist and a mother from Regg ...

. In the last ten years of his term, Dozza concentrated on more ambitious designs, such as the ring road, the fair district and the revival of cultural life. However, in 1962 Dozza became ill and was forced to resign four years later. During his final years of his service for the city, Umbro Lorenzini (1925-2000), who was an assessor at that time, helped him with different projects, such as Bologna's orbital road. He died on 28 December 1974, at the age of 73, and is buried in the Certosa di Bologna monastery.

References

External links

*Files about his parliamentary activities (in Italian)
Constituent Assembly
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dozza, Giuseppe 1901 births 1974 deaths Italian Communist Party politicians 20th-century Italian politicians Mayors of Bologna Italian atheists