Fernanda Wittgens (1903-1957)

Fernanda Wittgens was born in Milan in April 1903 to Margherita Righini, of Italian-Hungarian origin, and Adolfo Wittgens, of Austrian origin. The parents, particularly the father, a high school literature professor, raised their sons and daughters according to a secular upbringing with democratic-Resurgence values that were marked by respect for the state. In addition to moral rigor, Adolfo Wittgens also transmitted the love for culture and art, for example by establishing a tradition where every Sunday was devoted to visits to museums and monuments.

In 1935 her master Modigliani was dismissed from Brera on charges of anti-fascism, and in 1938 with the signing of the racial laws, as he was of Jewish origin, he was confined and expelled from the state administration. On these occasions Wittgens tried to support Modigliani by collecting signatures, interluding with influential political figures and meanwhile keeping the channel of communication with Modigliani active and continuing his work. In 1940, as the Second World War raged in Europe, Fernanda Wittgens, who for the second time proved to be perfectly suitable in the competition for the position of museum director, was assigned to the Pinacoteca. She was the first woman to direct Brera and, together with Palma Bucarelli, was the first woman in Italy to obtain such a prestigious and responsible role.

From the very beginning, the priority was to ensure a shelter for the works of art in Brera: Wittgens put in place the operational plan already prepared for the transfers and took care of personally accompanying the works during transport to the temporary shelters, with extraordinary dedication. Brera was hit by aerial bombardment in February 1943 and again in August, which caused very serious damage, with the complete destruction of twenty-six of the thirty-four rooms.

In such a wartime context, Wittgens did not close herself off in her role as scholar and administrator, but rather showed that she fully understood the complexity of the historical and political phase, choosing to engage herself personally, despite the dangers. In fact, she carried out the activity of saving the works of art of Brera hand in hand with the rescue and assistance of human beings, political persecuted and Jews. She used her prestige and position in order to help those in need. She became part of a female-dominated assistance network, linked to the Action Party and in connection with the Milanese Resistance, which was responsible for harboring wanted persons, providing false documents and promoting clandestine expatriation. It was because of a denunciation that this activity was abruptly interrupted by the arrest of the entire support network in the summer of 1944. This was followed by a trial by the Special State Tribunal in which the protagonists, including Wittgens, were described as “intellectuals and philanthropic women who allowed themselves to act contrary to the Duce’s laws”. She recalled: “In the interrogation we behaved as we did during the investigation, that is, we denied everything that could be denied and admitted what was too evident. However our judges certainly did not find us frightened or worried; the ugliness, the atrocities, the tragedies of the prison at that time had certainly not sapped our spirits”. Indeed, during the trial Wittgens firmly declared that “my action is limited exclusively to the assistance of the two young men mentioned in these minutes. I do not have a firm political definition; I have never been a fascist while respecting its laws. My ideas rest mainly on a theoretical syndicalist socialism given my social work background. One of the points of fascist doctrine that I could not accept is the one concerning racial strife since I was educated by Prof. Paolo D’Ancona of the University of Milan, who was of Jewish race, and by Prof. Modigliani who was my boss at Brera for 14 years, who was also Jewish”. She was sentenced to four years in prison and suspended from her post as director of the Brera.

Wittgens showed great dignity in facing conviction and imprisonment, while she continued to devote herself to her studies, writing and reflection, as she explained in a letter to her grandchildren: “Don’t grieve too much for me, prison is a humiliating thing for ordinary offenders, but when one has the light of an idea for which she has given testimony within themselves, prison becomes a kind of… graduation examination. One checks one’s moral strength, one’s will and the rightness of one’s course of action. Then there are encounters with great souls and the consolation of noticing human good and solidarity among so much evil. […] We now… old people live these ugly days precisely with the hope that the younger generations will be spared of the tragedy that we have experienced, that the new barbarism will be over and that you will be able to serve a resurgent and ever more secure civilization”. 

The high moral stature of Fernanda Wittgens emerges clearly at several points in her correspondence from prison with family members: “I am faithful to my ideal, because I have a sense of reality (the 20 years of fascism are not reality, they are an anti-historical parenthesis, a fetish that collapsed at the test of the war and reality is the new world that is now rising) I am in here. And precisely because I have not betrayed the true law, which is the moral law, I am provisionally affected. The law of the state must be followed as long as it coincides with the moral law. But when following it means becoming anti-Christian, one must know how to disobey no matter what. Was I right to say that fascism would collapse, that Germany would lose the war? That freedom would return to the world? Was I right? Then, you will see that this affair too will soon be over”.

Wittgens conscientiously chose to take action in the darkest hour, at the same time aware of the dangers and responsibility of facing historical facts and preserving a sense of humanity: “It would be too good to be an intellectual in peaceful times, and to become cowardly, or even simply neutral, when there is danger. The mistake of my sisters and yours is to believe that I am dragged by good heart or pity to help, without knowing the risk. Instead, it is a firm purpose that responds to my whole way of life: I cannot do otherwise because I have a brain that reasons this way and a heart that feels this way”.

For these reasons, she rejected the request for mercy that the family had  prepared, because she felt she had to act according to her conscience. This is how she expressed herself in this regard: “Excellent, done with great dignity. But I am and must be firm to my point of view […]. You must understand that in my whole life what counts for me is to be always consistent with myself, that is my moral figure: everything else – if you want even life – comes later”.

Later, because of fear of possible reprisals in prison, Fernanda Wittgens was declared to have consumption and transferred to a clinic for hospitalization, thanks to the intervention of the family, which availed itself of the complicity of doctors. “I served only one year because in April 1945 the Liberation took place; I did seven months of actual imprisonment, because in February, by mysterious tricks and untold sacrifices, my family succeeded in having me declared sick with chest disease and had me admitted to a clinic, in fear of a massacre in the prison during the last days of the Nazi-Fascist collapse. The prison experience was, I would like to say, artistic. Incredible atrocities and sublime humanity that prove the truth of Montaigne’s saying about the very strange, mysterious thing that is the human being”.

The Liberation was followed by “difficult months of disorientation” due to the new political phase. Fernanda Wittgens was immediately and relentlessly active in the reconstruction of Brera; she was appointed extraordinary commissioner by the Allied command and then director again, in collaboration with Ettore Modigliani, who was reinstated. With the latter’s death in 1947, Wittgens undertook both the reconstruction of the Pinacoteca building according to a museographic and museological rearrangement of rooms and works, and her battle for a living museum, that is, for the implementation of the museum as an open and experimental place of education and active culture.

Wittgens worked to obtain more funds for reconstruction and to have Brera included in the official list of monuments damaged by the conflict for U.S. funds for restoration, from which (apparently due to ministerial forgetfulness) it had been excluded.

The reopening of Brera in June 1950 was seen as a great merit of hers by her contemporaries, for which the city was grateful. In the aftermath of the opening, an article in the press review spoke of it in these terms: “… And Professor Fernanda Wittgens, but Wittgens, the great Fernanda, did not tell us one thing: and that is that if Brera is reborn so beautifully, so much, so much is due to her. She managed to get the money, she fished the marbles, she was a daring animator, she was combative and skillful. What to call her? Constance? Caryatid? Cannon? Victory? What shall we give her? A scepter? A durlindane? An iron crown? A halo? No: give her some paintings, some masterpieces that she will give to Brera”. She was a woman of undoubted charisma and, as she had occasion to demonstrate, of tenacious character: “As her collaborators say of her, Fernanda Wittgens is a woman “loaded with dynamite””.

The same profile was recalled by Antonio Greppi, mayor of liberated Milan in 1945, in their first meeting: “It hardly gave the usher time to announce her. And I saw a woman before me,  unlike any other. A classical scholar would have imagined in her ‘Pallas-Athena’: I thought of Walkiria. She repeated the name to me, extending her hand: ‘I am Fernanda Wittgens'”.

In December 1949 she was awarded the Gold Medal by the City of Milan with the following reasons: “An exceptional temperament as a citizen and artist, in the years of oppression she intrepidly faced imprisonment for the cause of freedom. At the end of the war she waited with inexhaustible faith for the work of reconstruction and rearrangement of the city’s galleries and museums, doing her utmost also to acquaint Italians with their immense heritage of art and foreigners with the true, most enlightening face of our homeland”.

Her life was always oriented towards the conservation and enhancement of the artistic heritage. Among others she was responsible for the rescue and restoration of Leonardo’s “Last Supper” and the pressure for the purchase by the Municipality of Milan of Michelangelo’s “Pietà” currently preserved in the Sforzesco Castle Museum.

Fernanda Wittgens died prematurely in 1957.

The funeral home was set up at the entrance to the Art Gallery, where thousands of people paid homage to her and signed condolence registers. She was buried in the monumental cemetery of Milan.

In 2014, a memorial stone and a tree were dedicated to her in the Garden of the Righteous. A film was dedicated to her in 2022.

This is what his commemorative plaque reads:

Generous and strong soul

Fernanda Wittgens

After the destruction of the war

She dedicated herself to resurrecting

Of the city, of culture

From the Brera Art Gallery

Implementing in the ancient institute

The modern concept of the living museum.