Giuseppe Finzi

Giuseppe Finzi (Rivarolo Mantovano 17 February 1815 - Mantua 7 June 1886) was a patriot and Italian politician.

Finzi was born in 1815 in Rivarolo Mantovano by Abraham and Rosa Finzi, both Jewish family . He was already a student at the Young Italy of Giuseppe Mazzini and, in 1848, at the outbreak of the first war of independence he enlisted in the Piedmontese army. After the defeat of the battle of Novara Giuseppe Garibaldi followed in the defense of the Roman Republic.

He was involved in the facts of the Mazzinian conspiracy of Mantua in 1852, arrested in his villa in Canicossa di Marcaria on the night of 16 June 1852, he was one of the few who never confessed and thus escaped the death penalty, but was condemned by of the Austrian military judiciary at 18 years of hard prison, then condoned in 1856 . He served four years in prison in part in the prisons of Josephstadt and Theresienstadt near Prague . Released on 2 December 1856, he was one of the main accusers of Luigi Castellazzo which always pointed out as the traitor of the conspirators from Mantua, called the Martyrs of Belfiore.

In 1859 the Piedmontese government appointed him extraordinary commissioner for the province of Mantua, from which he was dismissed by the Minister of the Interior, Urban Rattazzi, on 2 October 1859 for violating the agreements signed with the armistice of Villafranca di Verona.

Giuseppe Finzi was elected Member of Parliament from 25 March 1860 for the college of Viadana. He retained the parliamentary mandate until the elections of 1882, being elected in various colleges: Milan V, Borghetto Lodigiano, Bologna and Pesaro. King Umberto I finally nominated him as senator on the proposal of Augustine Depretis, on 7 June 1886 but died before he took the oath, in his residence in Canicossa. He was buried in the cemetery of Canicossa di Marcaria .