Pitigrilli, aka Flamel, aka Dino Segre, was a political chameleon and a spy. Illustration by Marco Herr. — *Pitigrilli*, aka *Flamel*, aka Dino Segre, was a political chameleon and a spy. Illustration by Marco Herr.

Pitigrilli – notorious novelist and political chameleon

He wrote scandalous novels, masqueraded as an anti-fascist activist and spied for Mussolini. After fleeing to Switzerland, Pitigrilli’s true colours were revealed.

Noëmi Crain Merz

Noëmi Crain Merz is a historian at the University of Basel.

When a car with a Turin numberplate was stopped at the Ponte Tresa checkpoint on the Italian-Swiss border on 11 March 1934, it appeared to be carrying business travellers. But appearances were deceptive. Sion Segre and his passenger Mario Levi were carrying anti-fascist pamphlets and newspapers. When the young men were led to the border police, Levi made a dash for it. Without taking off his hat and coat, he hurled himself into Lake Lugano and started swimming towards Switzerland. As he was being rescued by the customs officers in Ticino, he wearily cried out: “Long live Italy! Long live freedom!” On the other bank, the Italian police were waiting to take Sion Segre into custody. This led to arrests and proceedings in Turin against members of the ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ (‘Justice and Freedom’) movement, which had been founded in 1929. The group’s liberal and reform-minded socialist intellectuals were fighting for a free, democratic Italy. They operated from Paris and went underground in Italy.

An agent on the night sleeper

Shortly after Sion Segre’s arrest, a cousin paid the family a visit. The cousin was Dino Segre, who had achieved notoriety writing under the pen name Pitigrilli, with works such as Luxurious Breasts and The Chastity Belt. His scandalous novel Cocaine, translated into 16 languages, was banned by the Vatican. The journalist and author had a cynical view of the world, with no respect for convention and a contempt for the middle classes, despite being from a middle class background himself. His witticisms were famous, his appearance dapper, his affairs notorious. A brief spell in prison led to his undeserved reputation as an anti-fascist activist, his lover, the poet Amalia Guglielminetti, having accused him of opposing the regime as an act of revenge after they split up.

**Dino Segre’s lover Amalia Guglielminetti (photographed in the 1930s) had the spy sent to jail out of jealousy.** Wikimedia

German first edition of Pitigrilli’s Cocaine, 1927. — **German first edition of *Pitigrilli*’s *Cocaine*, 1927.** Wikimedia

Although not very popular in Turin’s intellectual circles, the 41-year-old earned the trust of the leaders of ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ in Turin and Paris because he was the cousin of Sion Segre and because he had spent time in prison. He travelled back and forth between the two cities in first-class sleeper cars, with suitcases full of anti-fascist writings and a head full of classified information. But what they didn’t know in Paris and Turin was that Pitigrilli had been an agent of the fascist secret police – the OVRA – since 1930. As Dino Segre saw it, there were only two kinds of people in the world: “smart ones who take advantage, and idiots who get taken advantage of”, as journalist Barbara Allason wrote about Pitigrilli in 1922. As a member of ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ Allason found out the hard way just how fitting her characterisation of him was. In 1935, a year after the writer had infiltrated the movement, the police delivered a crushing blow to the Turin group by arresting all the leading members. The regime cracked down on the mostly young dissidents, who faced lengthy prison sentences or exile for belonging to an illegal group.

Portrait of Dino Segre alias Pitigrilli, 1924. — **Portrait of Dino Segre alias *Pitigrilli*, 1924.** gallica / Bibliothèque nationale de France

In their years behind bars – during which Mussolini led a war of conquest in East Africa, concluded a pact with Hitler, and entered the war on the side of Nazi Germany – they had plenty of time to reflect on who could have tipped off the police. And there was growing certainty that it had been Pitigrilli, who himself had become a target for the fascist authorities in the late 1930s. After the racial laws were introduced in 1938, his half-Jewish background became an issue, and even politically he no longer enjoyed the same level of trust. In 1940, he disappeared from the list of OVRA agents. He only narrowly escaped internment thanks to the advocacy of Mussolini’s sister Edvige, who was a friend of his.

**Edvige Mussolini photographed in 1918.** Wikimedia

In the summer of 1943, the political winds changed. Il Duce was overthrown and imprisoned, and the new Italian government agreed a ceasefire with the Allies. Political prisoners, including the Turin anti-fascists betrayed by Pitigrilli, were released. In September, German troops occupied northern and central Italy, freed Mussolini and appointed him head of a puppet fascist regime on Lake Garda. Tens of thousands of people – soldiers, Jews, dissidents – decided to flee and crossed the Swiss border illegally. One of them was Pitigrilli. On 17 September 1943, he was registered in Switzerland as a political refugee. The writer was initially held in a camp, but before long he was able to move to Lausanne where he had contacts. In October 1943, Radio Bari broadcast a message from Turin to unoccupied southern Italy, saying: “Beware of Dino Segre, better known under the pen name Pitigrilli (…). He’s an informer and has already denounced about 50 people to the fascist authorities.” The message got lost in the chaos that followed the German occupation, until Italian newspapers picked up on it again in early 1944. This time, the Swiss Armed Forces Staff reacted and informed the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland, but it failed to take action and so the writer continued to be seen as an anti-fascist activist during his exile.

The armed forces informed the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland about Pitigrilli’s dubious past in 1944. But nothing came of it. — **The armed forces informed the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland about *Pitigrilli*’s dubious past in 1944. But nothing came of it.** Swiss Federal Archives

Despite his privileged situation as a ‘private internee’, Pitigrilli felt restricted in Lausanne. He wasn’t allowed to move elsewhere without permission, couldn’t work, and couldn’t publish any articles. But who could he complain to? A letter to the Ticino federal councillor Enrico Celio, whom he mistakenly took to be the Swiss President, seemed fitting. The literature-loving member of the government was moved by Pitigrilli’s poetic words describing his lack of freedom. Celio asked the director of police to do something for the writer, even though his writing style was “often a little on the facile side”. But that official was as unimpressed as the head of the military Wartime Broadcasting Service by the Italian refugee’s ‘great talent’. Pitigrilli’s request to be allowed to work as a journalist was repeatedly denied. The competent unit found that “to the Swiss mind” he had “often gone beyond the pale, particularly in his handling of erotic themes”.

**Federal Councillor Enrico Celio lobbied for greater freedom for Dino Segre in Switzerland. To no avail.** Swiss National Museum

As he was not allowed to write legally, Dino Segre, alias Pitigrilli, penned articles under the pseudonym Flamel. And not for the first time, he demonstrated his disregard for the law. Married since 1931 and never divorced, he remarried in Lugano in 1940. His first wife was Jewish, and his second an Italian lawyer and Catholic, whom he wed in church. This was the first step in his extensive transformation. Once a cynical atheist, Pitigrilli now converted to Catholicism. After the war, he described his conversion in a book lauded by the Catholic church.

Denial of espionage until the end

In late April 1945, just before the arrival of the Allies, partisan groups expelled the German troops from northern Italy. Mussolini was captured and shot close to the Swiss border as he tried to flee. Not long after, partisans came across Pitigrilli’s name in secret police records. When his agent reports were made public that September, the Federal Council also responded and put the famous refugee on the wanted list. But he had already disappeared from Lausanne and gone underground. Until 1947, he lived incognito with his family, at least partly in Switzerland, before moving to Argentina. He also made some influential friends in South America and is said to have helped Evita Perón pen her autobiography. But, as is so often the case in Pitigrilli’s life, it’s unclear where the truth in this anecdote ends and fiction begins. The writer, who spent his last years in Paris, always denied spying for the fascist secret police. His reasons for acting as an informant remain unclear. As a successful author, he didn’t need the money. And he didn’t have any true enemies on whom he wanted to exact revenge. He despised the Fascists and their ideals. Vittorio Foa, who blindly trusted him and as a result spent years in prison, speculated that he played the spy for amusement, as if he were a character in a novel. In his autobiography published in 1949, Pitigrilli parla di Pitigrilli (‘Pitigrilli Speaks About Pitigrilli’), there’s no mention of the espionage affair.

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