Federico Enriques, historic Zanichelli guidebook, has died
He was 84 years old and passed away on the night of Tuesday, 31 March. He made the publishing house a leading player in the educational sector
Federico Enriques, the historic general manager and then CEO of Zanichelli, has died at the age of 84. He died on Tuesday night, 31 March, in Bologna, the headquarters of the historic publishing house founded in 1859 and owned by the Enriques family since 1946. He held the reins of Zanichelli first as general manager, from 1970 to 2006, then as CEO, which he held until his death.
Success in Education
He joined Zanichelli in 1960 and made the publishing house a leading player in the school textbook and non-fiction popularisation sector with manuals, anthologies, compact encyclopaedias and vocabularies. Together with publishing editors Delfino Insolera, Miro Dogliotti, Umberto Tasca and Giuseppe Ferrari, he contributed to the success of some milestones in the publisher's catalogue, including Mario Pazzaglia's anthologies, Amaldi's physics, Augusto Camera and Renato Fabietti's history, Gianni Sofri's geography course, Bergamini, Barozzi and Trifone's mathematics textbooks, and Giorgio Cricco and Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro's art history. With Gianni Sofri he worked on the anthology for secondary schools edited by Italo Calvino.
The Friulian origins and political experience
Born in Udine on 3 August 1941, Enriques studied in Turin and Milan and graduated in Law at the University of Bologna, where he was also a volunteer assistant to the chair of jurist Pietro Rescigno. In 1960 he joined Zanichelli and the long journey first as general manager and then as managing director.
Not only a publisher, Enriques has also been a politician: elected senator in 2006 in Emilia-Romagna with the Ulivo coalition, he was a member of the Budget and European Union Policies committees. When he was elected, he left the reins of the publishing house to Irene Enriques, the current managing director, but he did not stand in the 2008 political elections.
After the political parenthesis, Enriques returned to work at Zanichelli as managing director. In 2025 he closely followed the change in corporate structure with the birth of Zanichelli Holding. The funeral ceremony, a secular one, will be held privately, the publishing house announced.
