Early Life
Ciano was born in Livorno, Italy, in 1903, to a modest family. He was the son of Costanzo Ciano and his wife Carolina Pini; his father was a navy officer, World War I hero in the Royal Italian Navy (due to that he was appointed Conte by Victor Emmanuel II), Admiral and founding member of the National Fascist Party and re-organizer of the Italian Merchant Marine in the 1920s. The elder Ciano (he was nicknamed Ganascia, meaning "The Jaw") was not above making a private profit from his public office; and as a side effect his son was soon used to living a high-profile glamorous life, which he continued to maintain until almost the end. He would use his influence to depress the stock of a company, after which he would buy a controlling interest, which would increase his wealth after its value rebounded and owned among other holdings a newspaper, farmland in Tuscany, and other properties worth millions. After studying Philosophy of Law, the younger Ciano had a brief experience as a journalist before choosing a diplomatic career, and served as an attaché in Rio de Janeiro. On 24 April 1930, he married Benito Mussolini's daughter Edda Mussolini, with whom he soon left for Shanghai where he served as Italian Consul. Back in Italy, a few years later, he became the minister of press and propaganda.
Read more about this topic: Galeazzo Ciano
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)