Ursula Hirschmann (1913–1991)

Ursula Hirschmann was born in Berlin to a prosperous German Jewish family. Her parents were Hedwig and Carl Hirschmann, a surgeon, and she had a brother, Albert O. Hirschman, and a sister Eva. She studied economics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt University of Berlin), together with her brother. In 1932, she joined the youth organization of the Social Democratic Party to participate in the resistance against the rise of Nazism. In the summer of 1933, after the Nazi Party came to power, she had to flee to Paris. There she became re-acquainted with Eugenio Colorni, a young Italian philosopher and socialist whom she had met at university in Berlin. Ursula moved to Trieste, Colorni's home, to work with him in the Italian anti-fascist resistance movement. The couple married in 1935 and had three daughters. Colorni was arrested in 1938 and sent to prison on the island of Ventotene. Hirschmann followed him there, but as she was not subject to the restrictions of the prisoners, she could leave the island. With Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli, Colorni co-authored the now-famous Ventotene Manifesto that outlined a post-war democratic European Union. Hirschmann brought the text of the document to the mainland, and played a key role in printing and disseminating it. In August 1943 in Milan, she participated in the founding of the European Federalist Movement. Colorni escaped from confinement in 1943, and fled to Rome; there he was murdered by Nazis in 1944. Hirschmann moved to Switzerland, where she married Spinelli as her second husband and settled in Rome with him after the war. Together they had three more daughters. In 1975, Hirschmann founded Femmes pour l'Europe, aimed at uniting women in the struggle for European federalism. She tried several times to write her memoirs, but serious illness prevented her from completing them. Altiero Spinelli edited the unfinished manuscript, which was finally published in book form as Noi senza patria (We Without a Country) in 2022.