I stumbled upon Antonio Feruglio at a conference about Oscar Soravito. I wanted to understand how the Societa’ Alpina Fruilana managed to create mountaineers like the latter, like Celso Gilberti, like Giovanni Granzotto and others, until the “blooming of a true mountaineering school” in Friuli, coming up from the rear as they did.

In the “Profiles” which Giovanni Battista Spezzotti wrote for the centennial issue of In Alto (1974), he mainly gave credit to Antonio Feruglio and Riccardo Spinotti. But he also added a noble moral portrait of Feruglio: “A proud and ardent spirit devoted to the ideals of freedom, even when, as it so happened, it came at a personal cost. He upheld these qualities when the times did not tolerate independent thought and action, even among the most moderate dissidents”. Later on, he mentioned forced detention on the Aeolian Islands. In the same magazine, this time coinciding with Feruglio’s passing in 1984, Soravito painted a portrait of him in pure Soravito style: extremely thorough, very concise, and almost exclusively limited to the mountaineering part.

In my opinion, the portrait needed to be completed, adding the political part which had taken place concurrently: both of them had their most adventurous phase between 1920 and 1927, ending with their being sent to Lipari.

Antonio Feruglio was born in Feletto Umberto on 16 October 1896 to Giobatta “Broili” Feruglio and Giustina Tosolini, part of a large, land-owning, well-to-do family. All of the children were educated, at least finishing secondary school: Felice and his sisters Maria and Giuseppina were teachers, we don’t know about Teresa, Beniamino was a surveyor who enrolled at the school of agriculture in Bologna, but after what happened at Palazzo d’Accursio, he served three months in jail and was expelled from university, Antonio was a bookkeeper, Domenico earned a degree in agriculture and became Director of the Royal Laboratory of Agricultural Chemistry in Udine, and also an orchestra conductor and playwright, Giuseppe was a professor of medicine at the University of Padua. Feletto was a mainly working-class town with a strong political persuasion (it was known as a stronghold of socialism) and the members of the family were particularly so, thanks mainly to the influence of their mother. They would pay a high price for it: all of the male children lost their jobs due to their anti-fascist stance, the house they lived in burned to the ground, Beniamino was sentenced to nine years of confinement following five years of supervised parole in San Donà di Piave, where he could become mayor after liberation. Arno Foschiatti, a bricklayer and acquaintance, later noted that “along with other young people, we would go and listen to the endless discussions at the Feruglio house, understanding what we could. It was their teacher mother who often helped expand the terms of the debate.”

Their cousin Egidio Feruglio—board member of the Società Alpina Friulana (the Friulan Alpine Club, known as the SAF), editor of In Alto from 1920 to 1924 and from 1949 to 1950, and lecturer in geology at the University of Bologna—had to emigrate to Argentina in 1934 after having refused to join the Fascist Party.

Antonio’s brothers were also mountaineering enthusiasts: Felice and Giuseppe were members of the SAF for years, Beniamino went with him on a few ascents, Antonio was continuously from 1920, except for 1929, at least until 1970.

After earning his degree in accounting, spared from the draft due to thoracic insufficiency, Antonio began working at the bank, keeping his job even after the Battle of Caporetto.

He began spending time in the mountains in the early 1920s. His son Fausto once recalled that he was capable of going to Chiusaforte by bicycle, carrying his skis with him, parking his bicycle, climbing up to Sella Nevea, skiing down to Tarvisio, hopping on the train, stopping to get his bicycle and then pedalling home, all in one day.

The war had caused major setbacks for the mountaineering club he belonged to: fallen members or those who became refugees, a ransacked library and headquarters, and destroyed mountain huts. Climbing mountains was the least of their problems. Not that it was at the apex in the twenty years prior: at the Rigolato Conference held in 1901, the new chairman Olinto Marinelli complained that the heroic era of exploration of our mountains was over, and that the “professional mountaineers”, namely those who spent time in the mountains to discover them, would instead have to become scientific explorers if they didn’t want to disappear entirely. At the Pontebba Conference held in 1906, Marinelli slightly changed his tune, yet the death of Giuseppe De Gasperi in the mountains in 1907, followed by Vittorio Tessitori in 1914, ensured that few mountaineers dedicated their time to climbing. To the contrary, aside from Alessandro del Torso’s Lavaredo ascent in 1913, exploration was all but abandoned entirely. By comparison, in 1898, it became custom at the Società Alpina delle Giulie (the Julian Alpine Club) to provide the member assembly with a precise recounting of that year’s mountaineering activities.

Antonio’s ascents were mentioned for the first time in In Alto in 1921, when he re-did the Dogna Route on Jôf di Montasio, opened by Giacomo di Brazzà, Pecile and the Mantica brothers in 1882.

As Spezzotti described it:

Feruglio can be credited for rediscovering the Dogna Route. On 29 August, he and his brother Beniamino set out with Luigi Bonanni, Mario Rea, a local resident who came along as a guide, and Guglielmo Pittino, brought on with the sole purpose of helping to find a route that he, an old hunter, said he knew of but ultimately had almost entirely forgotten. Without a rope, with inadequate gear, on a gloomy and foggy day, between intermittent downpours, relying on his instinct for orientation and knack for blazing trails, he managed to summit Mount Jôf by the evening. The poor visibility made it impossible to declare whether or not the path taken was entirely or in part the same as Brazzà and Mantica’s original route. But the following ascent, which Feruglio, Cesare Scapini, Livia Cesare and Valda Driussi completed in 1922 without a guide, was what got it definitively recognized.

He also climbed Mount Sernio on 5 June, Kellerspitzen on 10 July, and he attempted Mont Blanc on 29 August, which was a failure due to a participant feeling unwell. The same year, he was one of the founders of the Udine branch of the UOEI (Union of Italian Worker Hikers).

To understand why Feruglio bothered to help found an association that, all things considered, was a competitor of the SAF, we have to take a step back in time. It was 1907, when the law dictated that Sunday was the weekly day of rest. This free day enticed many to spend time in the mountains in groups, but: “In Italy, enrolment in the Italian Alpine Club (the CAI) was reserved to the upper middle class”. In Monza in 1911, the first branch of the UOEI was formed, an association whose name specifically referenced workers and even had the motto of “pro mountains and anti alcohol” (in 1909 more than 1,400 people died due to chronic alcoholism). The goal was to encourage them to spend time in the mountains, considered a healthy and beautiful place. Membership fees were low (one Italian lira per year at founding), and always lower than those of the CAI. And, although the SAF had broken off from the CAI for economic reasons, in 1921 it asked resident members in Udine to pay an annual fee of 60 liras, which could be broken out into quarterly payments. Visiting members were to pay 36, and non-residents 24. The UOEI, on the other hand, was happy with 7 for ordinary members and 12 for supporting members in 1924.

Going back to why the UOEI branch was formed, Aldo Cuttini, who later became the Italian Communist Party’s representative within the Friulian Liberation Committee, stated:

With Antonio, we’d climb up above Tarcento, on the Musi Mountains, right above Mount Cuarnan. We’d all sit there and he’d pontificate; he’d explain things to us. There were about 20 of us young chaps. We weren’t allowed to bring paper and a pen, because he’d say: ‘If you want to go to jail, bring a notepad and a pen and I guarantee that, in three months… Listen and keep it to yourselves’. He held lessons that were a bit theoretical, a bit on the history of exercise, on the need for the working class, which had always been exploited by capitalism, to create its own culture and to get organized.

In 1922, he went on the camping trip organized by the SAF at Sella Nevea. In the meantime, he began to be active as a political militant and joined the Socialist Cooperative of Feletto Umberto, becoming part of the Third International wing of the Italian Socialist Party. He took part in the Provincial Congress in Cividale on 16 July, where he firmly opposed the idea of an agreement with democratic and liberal-inspired forces.

1923 was:

a year rich in substance for the definitive preparation of many Friulan mountaineers, and a particularly excellent one for Feruglio, by then a best-in-class climber. A brief list of his main ascents confirms it: in July, he and Luigi Cecchini, Luigi Bonanni, Livia Cesare and Iolanda de Basadonna completed one of the first Italian repetitions of the “ultra direct route” of Creta Grauzaria (opened in 1900 by Napoleone Cozzi), using the same route on the descent too; he discovered a new interesting route on the western wall of Mount Sernio. In August, he, Cesare Scapini and their two trusty female climbing partners tackled the repetition of the “Italian hunter route” on Jôf del Montasio, reaching the peak only after having completed a long and challenging variant.

A few days later, with Enrico Bonanni, he managed to overcome the small yet hard wall on the east-north-east side of Bila Pec, approaching it from the left of Grotta Brazzà. Lastly, in September, again with Cecchini and their two intrepid female companions, he completed some rather nice climbs of Campanile Toro and Campanile Montanaia on the Monfalconi Group, thus wrapping up his magnificent summer session.

Cecchini described this adventure in In Alto that same year, and an elegant photo album of the week from 3 to 8 August survived up to today, with an inscription in lovely penmanship to the lead climber and the signatures of his companions.

Five days later, Feruglio was interrogated at the Prefecture of Udine. He confirmed his belief in communism, that he wanted to continue making propaganda and that he was Italian because he was born in Italy, not out of sentiment.

He was arrested.

Probably that same year, he left the Italian Socialist Party and joined the Italian Communist Party, carrying out intense propaganda for it. He convinced the members of the “red” cooperative of Feletto Umberto directed by him to dissolve rather than join the Fascist-inspired Italian Cooperative Union. His impulsive character betrayed him on 26 June 1924, when the Court of Venice sentenced him to 5 days of detention and a fine of100 Italian liras for arbitrarily exercising his rights.

On 22 September, he and Riccardo Spinotti, Livia Cesare and Edoardo Tolazzi climbed the wall south of the Tower and the west peak of Kellerspitzen, intending to repeat the route taken by Samassa and Urbanis in 1895, but instead opening an entirely new one.

In July he climbed the largest Pradibosco peak with Livia Cesare, Scapini, Regolo Corbellini and Lippi. They named it Creta Livia in honour of their rope team member.

Feruglio was elected board member of the SAF.

Then we get to 1925. While new climbers begin to come to light, such as Oscar Soravito and Marco Tessari, both of whom would become CAI “scholars”, and while the UOEI created a ski section to the acclaim of the SAF chairman, Antonio’s mountaineering activities began to be impacted by his politics.

Antonio and his brother Beniamino were “arrested on 3 October while holding a meeting of subversive elements along the River Cormor in Feletto Umberto.”

In 1926, Antonio was fired from his job at the bank in Udine due to his subversive ideas.

In the meantime, fascism was changing Italy: on 1 May, the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (the “National Afterwork Club”) was created, which became ENAL after the war. Depending on the activity carried out, each association had to decide either to close, to join it or, perhaps becoming part of the CAI, to join the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI). On 10 April 1926 in Genova, CAI Chairman Eliseo Porro announced at a board meeting that he had decided to join.

Over the following years, the CAI would incorporate all the associations which had to do with the mountains (which of course had not closed). The SAF stayed independent until 1930, at which point it was absorbed by the CAI.

In August 1926, Antonio went on the SAF camping trip to Pocol (Cortina) where he and his colleagues Spinotti, Bonanni and Cecchini shared their mountaineering expertise with those in attendance. Two new talented young climbers emerged from the event: Celso Gilberti (16 years old) and Giovanni Granzotto (a little bit older), both future “scholars”.

On 28 October, a group of 20 Fascists held a protest under the windows of his house, to which he responded by yelling “I’m a red Italian and I won’t change my mind”, continuing on to say he would have moved to France if they would have given him a passport.

On 27 April 1927, the Prefect of Udine sent a note to the General Head of Public Safety in which he suggested confinement for the “die-hard opposer of the Regime”.

On 3 July, Antonio and Giovanni Cantoni created a new route on Jôf di Montasio, reaching Grande Cengia from the northwest with a presumable IV-V difficulty ranking. It was one of the last climbs with Livia Cesare on Winkler Tower in the Vajolet Group.

In the meantime, the Minister of the Interior decided to heed the advice of the Police Department: Antonio was locked up for two years on Lipari Island as of 3 September. An info sheet from the Prefecture of Messina has survived to this day, attesting to his regular conduct. In 1929, shortly before his sentence was over, he was asked to take part in the famous escape from the island. He refused, because it would have meant having to live in exile. On 27 July, Carlo Rosselli, Francesco Fausto Nitti and Emilio Lussu successfully completed the attempt.

About a month later, he was released and he returned to Udine.

He was included on the list of people to arrest in certain circumstances.

His son still remembers fleeing from the courtyard behind the house in Via Ampezzo in Udine to escape capture.

The information sheets continued to be sent by the Prefecture every quarter until 1943. Thanks to them, we know that he worked at a stationer’s, at the Carducci bookshop, at the Cogolo & Battistutto chemists, and that he held on to his ideas but that he lived a rather secluded life. He became a family man (he got married and had two children) and he would no longer associate with suspicious characters. Although, when Aldo Cuttini got back into contact with those who took part in the Musi excursions to rebuild the party’s leadership; Antonio also took part in the project.

In the meantime, the national statute of the CAI had been changed, moulding it to the desires of the Italian Fascist Party: the general president was appointed secretary of the PNF and all of those who had “executive” roles (chairmen, sub-section leaders, administrators, auditors) had to be enrolled in the party. Their activities “were to be focused on the military strengthening of the country”, and were placed under the supervision of the CONI and, in compliance with Italy’s race laws, “CAI members had to be of the Aryan race”.

Everything changed with the fall of Fascism.

On 30 May 1945, the Friulan Alpine Club appointed Antonio Feruglio commissioner. He would also become deputy Mayor of Udine and Council Treasurer. Following the Soviet–Yugoslav split, he left the Italian Communist Party and thus also all of his leadership roles.

Feruglio dedicated the rest of his life to the Carducci Bookshop, which he eventually became owner of, just before his death on 3 June 1984.

After the bookshop closed in the 2000s, the desk in his office became the chairman’s table in the board room of the Friulan Alpine Club thanks to the donation made by his heirs.