Italian scientists ‘recreate DNA’ of fascist warrior-poet from semen stains

Forensic team says it used handkerchief splashed with Gabriele D’Annunzio’s sperm to recreate eccentric, 19th-century, rightwing leader’s genetic blueprint

 

Agence France-Presse in Rome

Guardian, Thursday 12 March 2015

Forensic experts in Italy claim to have reconstructed the DNA of a national war hero and poet by analysing semen he left on a handkerchief, given to a lover 100 years ago.

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Gabriele D’Annunzio: ‘no one wants to clone him’. But maybe others? Photograph: Alinari Archives/Getty Images

In a global first, the protofascist warmonger Gabriele d’Annunzio’s DNA was reconstructed without exhuming his remains, police forensics officers said, raising hopes the technique could be used to solve cold cases.

D’Annunzio (1863-1938) gave the semen-splashed hankie to his lover, Countess Olga Levi Brunner, in 1916 as a souvenir after a night of passion.

Police in Cagliari, Sardinia, analysed the handkerchief, a letter the countess had penned to her beau and an ivory toothbrush conserved in the archives of the Vittoriale degli Italiani foundation.

Using a crimescope light they identified splotches of a liquid on the material not visible to the naked eye and compared the DNA results with that of Federico d’Annunzio, the rightwing revolutionary’s great grandson.

Foundation chief Giordano Bruno Guerri joked that the experiment might even open the door to the future cloning of historical figures even if their remains have been lost.

“Nobody wants to clone D’Annunzio, but nobody knows what changes will take place in science and society. It’s good the DNA has been collected,” he said.

In 1919, D’Annunzio seized the city of Fiume, in what is now Croatia, to set up an independent state. The state, which had a charter that foreshadowed the later Italian fascist system, fell a year later after bombardment by the Italian navy.

His poems are still studied today in Italian schools.