Giovanni Giuriati

Giovanni Giurati
President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies
In office 20 April 1929 – 19 January 1934
Preceded by	Antonio Casertano
Succeeded by	Costanzo Ciano
2nd President of the Free State of Fiume
In office 22 March 1922 – 16 September 1923
Preceded by	Riccardo Zanella
Succeeded by	Office abolished Gaetano Giardino (as military governor of Fiume)
Personal details
Born	4 August 1876 Venice, Kingdom of Italy
Died	6 May 1970 (aged 93) Rome, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Political party	Autonomist Association (1896–1914) Italian Nationalist Association (1914–1923) National Fascist Party (1923–1943)

Giovanni Giuriati (4 August 1876 – 6 May 1970) was an Italian Fascist politician.

Biography

Giuriati was born in Venice.

A law graduate and lawyer, he associated in 1903 with the irredentist group Trento e Trieste ("Trento and Trieste" - regions which it aimed to have secede from Austria-Hungary), and soon became its president. In early 1915, he channelled aid from Italians in Austria for the earthquake-hit town of Avezzano, and volunteered as a soldier in World War I. Wounded in the First Battle of the Isonzo, and again in the Third, he was twice decorated.

He returned to his legal practice as the war ended, but decided to follow the paramilitary movement of Gabriele D'Annunzio, as it attempted to seize the "unredeemed" and disputed port of Fiume (today Rijeka). Their forces were defeated in December 1920 by regular Italian troops, after they had ignored the provisions of the Treaty of Rapallo, and had even declared war on Italy. Nonetheless, Giuriati briefly served as provisoral President of the territory after a coup d'état against the government Free State of Fiume in March 1922 (in 1924, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia would renounce claim to the city). In the meanwhile, he had joined the Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF), being elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1921.

After the March on Rome, Giovanni Giuriati became Minister of Freed Territories in the Benito Mussolini government, and took over the Ministry of Public Works in 1925. He was President of the Chamber of Deputies between 1929 and 1934, and national secretary of the PNF in 1930. After 1934, he served as senator.

In 1943, he joined the condemnation of Italy's participation in the Axis, agreeing to the coup carried out by Dino Grandi inside the Grand Council of Fascism. The Italian Social Republic, a Fascist state recreated by Nazi Germany in Northern Italy, engineered the in absentia Verona trial against Grandi and his pro-Allies collaborators, during which Giuriati was sentenced to death. He escaped the wave of repression, and remained in liberated Italy. Charges of political corruption brought against him at the end of World War II were cleared, and Giuriati retired to a low profile life.

He died in Rome in 1970.