Abstract

Before 1972 only a few Italian scholars were familiar with Schmitt's work. In August 1922 the manuscript of his Die Diktatur was destroyed when the fascists attacked the printing house of the socialist journal Avanti. This explains why Schmitt was hardly known in Italy during the 1920s, when only two reviews of his work (Political Romanticism and Die Diktatur) were published. When fascist culture sought to come to terms with National Socialism in the 1930's, interest in Schmitt was renewed. But the main credit for knowledge of Schmitt in Italy belongs to Delio Cantimori. Together with Karl Löwith he wrote critical essays on Schmitt and published several translations of his writings, most notably, The Concept of the Political.