(née Franca Schiavetti)
born on July 31, 1925 in Rome, Italy
died on October 29, 1996 in Rome, Italy
Italian journalist
100th birthday on July 31, 2025
Biography
I didn't choose journalism as a career; I was born into it.
From 1964 onwards, Franca Magnani was “the voice of Italy” for German television viewers. Her interesting, distinctive reports were famous.
Three-year-old Franca was taken by her grandfather Chino to join her parents in Marseille, where the family had fled from Mussolini's fascism. The political divide ran through the family: her grandfather Ercole worked for the fascist regime as a police chief. Franca grew up as an émigrée in turbulent and dramatic times. Her parents' home became a meeting place for many other emigrants, including Ignazio Silone and Sandro Pertini, who also opposed the Italian regime.
The family moved to Zurich. Franca married the correspondent Arnold Künzli, went to London with him in 1947, and starting sending her first texts to Bologna. From 1949 to 1951, the couple lived in Bonn: “I arrived just in time to witness the beginning of an era in which many Germans saw the introduction of democracy as punishment for their atrocities and rearmament as a reward for future services.” After an amicable separation and divorce from her first husband, Franca married Valdo Magnani, the love of her life, in Rome and gave birth to their children Sabina and Marco.
In addition to working as a committed journalist, Franca Magnani was an enthusiastic mother and hostess. The word “stress” was not in her vocabulary! She was a freelance writer for all major TV and print media in Germany and Switzerland. In 1990, she published the memoirs of her childhood and youth: Eine italienische Familie (An Italian Family) became a bestseller.
When Franca Magnani was awarded the Fritz Sänger Prize for courageous journalism in 1983, Heinrich Böll paid tribute to her work in his laudatory speech: “What we may face in future are attempts at intimidation, such as those we experienced in 1970-74, most severely in 1977, the very year in which they began to withdraw you, Franca Magnani, from reporting, and this I do not consider a coincidence. You did what could be important for us now: you insisted on our right to exercise our freedom. That is not easy, as your law suit has demonstrated. It takes perseverance and courage.”
Franca Magnani died of cancer. Her final draft, discovered on her laptop by her grandsons Adrian and Lorenzo, ends with the words: “Wandern (Hiking) is another word that is unknown here; Italians don't hike. They walk, they stroll, they wander around – but they don't hike.”
(Text von 1999; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025. Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
Our Mama was Italian and European. She was fluent in all the major languages from London to Rome. She especially loved speaking Swiss German when reporting about Italy for listeners and viewers in Switzerland. (Sabina Magnani-von Petersdorf)
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